“Well,” said Flora. “I wondered. I was wondering, you see. Wondering about goats.” Oh, she must sound absurd. The girl looked hard at Flora. “Goats? We don’t have goat here. Beef kebabs and lamb. No goat.” Flora felt her face go red. Her hands worked at the short strap of her purse. “No, I mean. I—I don’t know what I mean. I wondered about knives.” The girl leaned forward on the counter. “Plastic knives along the wall, see? Right there by the napkins. Menu’s on the wall,” she said. Flora nodded at her. “Yes, I see. But”—she wished the girl would look at her with understanding, something other than that young look she was wearing, of impatience for the old. It was a look she’d seen on other students—on the art students, for example, who’d come into the Overlook because they thought the séances a hoot. This made her think of Susan. Susan wasn’t like that, was she? Perhaps if she began again, found some way to explain. The girl continued looking at her, and Flora stood there, foolish, hands now twisting in the air. At last the girl slipped off her chair and disappeared a moment, into a side room. Flora heard her voice, calling someone, a male voice shouting back, “Just wait, yeah?”
The girl’s father came out, or Flora thought he was her father. He had green eyes, too, a long nose as she had, and that same heavy chin, though he was lean, looked hard. Perhaps he was her brother. “Yes, madam, what is it you want?” His voice sounded more patient than the girl’s, and, Flora thought, perhaps, perhaps she could ask him. Something kind about that mouth. But when she tried to speak, she found that nothing came. “Chips, then?” the man said, moving towards the fryers. “Something for your tea?” He was trying to be helpful. The girl had gone back to her maths. “No,” said Flora. “Thank you. It was—I was foolish to have come.” Something in what Flora said made the man smile and lean towards her. “Among the blind,” he said, “a one-eyed man’s a king.” The girl looked up and rolled her eyes, as if her father, or perhaps he was her brother, dispensed these kinds of things all day, and she wished that he would stop. But Flora felt forgiven. She felt, almost, that Sheikh Abdul had spoken, was telling her to wait, to leave the Hassans be and wait. His ways would be his own. The proper knife would find her. She’d see what Susan had to say. “A king,” she said. “Yes. Thank you.” The girl picked up a calculator, and the thin man wiped the counter with a rag. The cowbell’s rattle as she left made Flora think of stairwells, of journeys yet to take.
Goats
Susan telephoned to Eva in the evening. “No luck,” she said. “No luck yet. But something odd has happened. I can’t explain, exactly. You’re going to have to trust me.” Not much later, Flora called to tell her how she’d fared. The trip to Paliston, the ring, the cloth. Even that she’d had a piece of cake. And when she explained to Eva that she’d also been to Hassan’s, Eva’s laughter—not unkind, not at her, but at the oddities of life when one believed in very nearly every kind of thing—made Flora feel much stronger. Eva said a strange thing then: Susan didn’t think that in the end, they were going to need a knife, but she couldn’t explain why. Flora, thinking still about one-eyed men and kings, said good night and tried to let it go.
George slept well, through morning, and when Flora went in with a cup of tea, she was able to hold her husband’s head up and pour some past his lips. When she replaced the water bottles, he startled her, amazed her, by speaking out her name. A soft, old sound, his endearment. “Flo.” Then he was gone again, asleep and murmuring to himself. Flora felt some hope. She thanked him, rubbed his hands and kissed him on the forehead. Later she went out into the garden and looked down into the well.
Eva went out to Gitanjalee’s and on her way back home stopped at Flora’s to drop off the pint bottle. A cloudy plastic thing with a photographic label: bright, clear roses in a vase. “They even have a gallon jug, I saw! Although,” she said, subdued, “we won’t, I think, need that much of it.” Flora took it from her carefully, as though it were a fragile thing that she might drop and break.
In the morning, Susan, who had let Julian sleep not on the floor beside the bed as she had planned, but next to her, beneath her single sheet, because she’d been distraught and felt that she could do with nice long arms around her, got up and made some coffee. She had work to do for school, and so did he—a set of still lifes, an empty glass in various lights—but neither of them felt prepared quite yet to leave the other’s side. They sat together on Susan’s orange sofa and made halfhearted sketches, smiled shy into the room, and now and then Julian squeezed her hand or touched her serious face. At three o’clock, things fell into place. Susan’s nose began to pound, a sweet pulsing in her head, just as a girl who they both knew, a burly sculptor named Amanda who often went on camping trips alone, came rapping on the window.
Amanda, loud, big-toothed, arms and face and legs haloed in dark down, was upset and in a hurry. She wished to know, did Susan have a pump, because she’d been riding past and noticed that her tire had gone flat. And she had a way to go still, was going on a trip.
The moment Susan heard the words, the dull headache she’d been having fell away at once, so suddenly she gasped, and she felt very hot. Julian, newly worried in his nervous and dramatic way that the girl to whom he’d given his whole heart the night before might even have a brain tumor or some other rare romantic ailment, hurried to her side and asked was she all right. She waved him off. “Let Amanda in!” she said. “It’s here. The thing I need is here.” Susan held her head, pressed a fist against her nose.
A generous girl with strong arms and good fingers, Amanda offered Susan a massage. “A head rub, that’ll help,” she said. But Susan didn’t want one. “I feel very well,” she said. “Please bring in your bike.” Amanda, thinking this meant Susan Darling did have just the pump, ran outside with a glad cry and brought the big thing in. “Where is it, then? I’ve got places to go, you know.” They both looked to Susan for an answer, but Susan had receded, a vague look on her face. Those light eyes of hers aflutter, closing, opening, with her gasps. “Susan!” Amanda, brusque, impatient, was not as yielding with her friend as boys tended to be. “Look here, Susie. I need to fix my flat. Where is it?” Susan looked up slowly, drew her eyes along the floor near Amanda’s feet, next to Amanda’s bicycle, up the tire, darting to the handlebars, then, as if afraid of what she’d see, to the thick neck of the thing. Amanda’s bicycle was white. And right there at the top of the front fork, the logo she’d expected. “It’s right there,” Susan said. “Don’t you see it?” She held out her hands to Julian, smiling, pale brow smooth at last. “‘Mountain Goat,’ it says.” It did. A silver, rugged, bilious, thick-horned, unbelievably good goat, poised to climb the world. Susan came towards them, so languid and so happy that Julian nearly swooned and Amanda couldn’t sputter at her, and she wrapped them both in her long arms. “Wait till I tell Flora.”
It wasn’t quite what Eva had expected. But she’d begun to feel that she no longer knew what the best thing was to do, that she was absolutely without rudder or compass. She’d had the thought, in fact, that everything since the previous Thursday was so strange and so unfathomable that it was best to simply go along. She felt carried, as though she herself, the woman people knew as Eva Bright, the woman she sometimes spoke to in the mirror, calling herself “Evie,” as her mother had once done, was not in charge of anything at all. That morning over her own cup of tea, she’d called lightly for Abdul, as if he’d join her at the table and talk about the weather. At Flora’s house she had, for no good reason she could name, determined that the pint bottle of rose water should sit out in the garden, right against the plum tree, until its time had come. And Flora had accepted Eva’s judgment without any question.
“Are we mad?” Eva had asked her. She couldn’t help it, though she knew she shouldn’t let herself be weak in front of Flora, that Flora needed her. Flora had looked very steadily at her and said, firm and slow and hard, “No, Eva. We are not. You’re doing this with me. We’re doing this for George.” And Eva had been grateful for what was
really a reminder: Flora needed Eva to stay with her, to believe in it, one hundred percent, to see it through, no matter what. And if “no-matter-what” meant listening to Susan Darling, who said the goats they needed had two wheels, thirteen gears, and nuts and bolts for flesh, well, Sheikh Abdul Aziz had never had flesh either—and wasn’t he about?
Preparations
On Monday morning, Flora went down to the bank. She no longer cared what people thought. This time she dressed in black. This was serious business, and she would look as grave, as solemn, as she needed to. The dress was one that George had liked, with a low neck and pearl buttons, a collar with gray piping. She put on a black hat, a pillbox one she’d kept from her young days, and stockings, and black shoes.
Outside, that spell of heat not spent, the air was still too warm, but Flora didn’t mind. Sweating in her finery made her feel everything more keenly—the discomfort, the excitement, and all of her desire to have her husband back. At the bank, she did not stop to stand under the fans. She went right up to the desk and withdrew the needed funds. It didn’t matter how expensive the bikes were. She was doing it for George. When she had thought of buying goats, she had known that they would not be cheap. Livestock was important. Livestock could give milk and meat, and the females could have babies. It was right to have to pay a lot.
She met Susan at the bike shop. Julian, lank, regretful, hung around the corner. He’d insisted, he’d just had to come. At Flora’s doubtful look, Susan said, “It’s all right. He’s harmless.” Once they were out of earshot, Susan added, “He’ll even help us, if you want.” Flora nodded. She didn’t care about him anymore. She was resolute. “Let’s go in,” she said.
Susan took her arm. “They’ve got what we need, Flora, they do.” Susan had been there since dawn, focusing her mind, making doubly sure, if it was possible, that this was really the right thing. It was, she thought, it was. She knew it. The sensation at her nose was dull, a comfort, a reassuring weight. She felt absolutely right. Perfectly in tune. Through the window, she had seen nearly right away that the cosmos was uniting with her, hugging her to its own vast and sinewy heart. One of each in stock. A white goat and a black one. The Saanen, Susan told herself, is the white one on the left. A little Swiss, just right. The Anglo-Nubian—mixed up from Egyptian, Eritrean (she had double-checked), and Indian, Jumna Pari, Chitral goats—is the dark one to the right, she’d recited to herself. Everything, yes, everything’s in place.
The assistant was surprised. Flora, Susan: a weird, unlikely pair, the long unnaturally white girl so very thin one wondered could she even manage a bike’s weight, and the big old shapeless woman dressed in formal black—surely she’d not manage the top tube, not in that straight skirt. Did she really mean to ride? But it wasn’t often he sold two bikes in a day. “We’ll take these,” Flora announced. “We’ll be paying cash.”
Outside, Susan called to Julian. “She was wonderful!” she said. “You were, Flora, you really were. Just great.” She kissed Flora on the cheek. Julian relieved Flora of the bicycle she’d managed to wheel out, and Flora saw that Susan had been right to bring him. Boys were good for something. How had she expected to get these to her house? Susan, stronger than she looked, was doing fine with hers, the black one. Julian, big-haired though he was, was remarkably polite. Solicitous, in fact. “If you like, Mrs. Hewett”—she was touched that he didn’t call her Flora—“Sue and I can ride these to your house. We’ll come this afternoon.”
Eva was already waiting on the walk, a box of tools beside her. She too was in black, a short-sleeved blouse and trousers, and it had occurred to her when she caught sight of herself in the mirror that perhaps she’d been a little harsh, dismissing Fontanella’s costumes as so much foppish show. Black was serious, wasn’t it? There was something powerful about it. Unwavering and strong. She got into Flora’s car feeling needed, a person with a task. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’m ready.”
The Strangest Afternoon
While Eva, standing in the garden, surveyed the layout of the grass and well and tree, Flora took the aspirin from George’s bedside and swallowed two with water. She slipped a lavender pastille into her mouth, then reached out for the mentholated ointment. She eased the mixture from its tube and rubbed it on her hands, her forearms, and her ankles, wiped her hands around her neck. “I’ve some work to do, my dear,” she said, though George was gone from her again, asleep. She squeezed his hand, put the ointment back. Nearly ready now, she kissed her George’s face, stroked his smooth old hair. “I’m coming, dear, just wait,” she whispered. “I’ll be right beside you. You’re not finished yet.”
At one o’clock, they gathered in the parlor. Flora brought out her blue cloths, and Eva, not quite sure what she was doing, nonetheless wound the sheet three times around Flora’s chest and shoulders, leaving room for her arms to come through. Susan had—she’d just known she might need them—three safety pins on her, and these with Eva’s help she fixed to Flora’s garb so it would not come loose.
While they worked, Julian rolled the bikes into the garden, using the back gate. He propped them up against the tree, the black one’s handlebars firmly jammed into the white one’s. Locking horns, he thought, and shook his head. He waited on the bench for the three women to come out, thinking with each moment that passed that he hoped his life with Susan would be just like this, for years—eventful, wondrous strange.
Eva came out first. She took a great many slow breaths, held her mouth a little open, listening with it for Sheikh Abdul Aziz. Nothing came to her, no taste, no shivers. But she felt deeply calm and right. She told Julian to move aside please, could he stand close to the house? She plucked the pint bottle from its nest among the tree roots and twisted off the cap. Standing balanced on both feet, heart centered, she peeled the padded silver foil off from the mouth and waited for a moment, then began to walk a circle, round the plum tree to the other side of the stone well and round again, dribbling as she went. The smell of rose water was light and soapy. Sweet.
At the bicycles, Eva paused a moment. Should she sprinkle them as well? Why not? The liquid formed bright beads against the chrome. She found herself standing in the very middle of the circle she had made, an unseen, perfumed ring. She dabbed water on her face, her elbows, and her wrists, and then she called for Susan. Susan gave Julian a smile and raised her fingers to her lips for him, sent them forwards in the air so that her little kiss would reach; then walked steadily, as if on good, thick, muscled legs instead of gliding, floating as she often did, to brave, strong Eva Bright. Eva dabbed her, too. Next, Flora, who had come out of the house, sailed out towards them, wonderful in blue. The perfume mingled with her ointment. “That’s right,” Flora said, looking at them all. “That’s it.” She took their hands in hers. “You’ll let me do it, won’t you? All alone?” Eva kissed her on the cheek. “Of course, she said. Sheikh Abdul asked for you.”
It took all afternoon. Flora Hewett, hunkered at the plum tree, took the bicycles apart with the tools from Eva’s box. She worked on both of them at once, starting with the Nubian, moving to the Swiss, and back again, so neither would feel slighted. You will come apart together, Flora thought, as equals. She started with the fork in front, loosening the hub clamps, locating the nuts, then pulling out the tires. She then moved to the back. She pried the tires off the wheels and laid them one atop the other, four black, nubby circles, which she pushed towards the well. She plucked off the front bolts, then worked on the rear cage, then moved back to the front. She struggled with the toe clips, then the pedals.
She was hot in her blue outfit, the black dress underneath. Her skin itched and tingled, her tight hair thickened and went damp all along her skull. Her pillbox hat fell off, tumbled towards the daisies. Flora plucked it up and put it on again. She worked slowly, carefully. She would not stop to rest.
It grew difficult, towards the end. Her fingers were on fire. Her knees hurt. The chains came loose with a clang, and Flora, suddenly upset, threw the
se towards the base of the plum tree. She was angry, angry, beneath that somber calm. It wasn’t fair losing a husband, and she wasn’t ready to. She wasn’t going to, she thought. She wasn’t. She hadn’t come this far, been ogled at last week’s Thursday Club as if she’d lost her mind or brought a bad thing on herself, consulted with a djinn, gone out to the jeweler’s, and made a great fool of herself at Hassan’s Take-Aways, to stop this thing in midstream. She was going to finish it. She’d do it if it killed her.
Eva, watching beside Susan (Julian, wisely sensing that this was not his to behold had long before slipped into the house), wondered if she ought to help. The sun was setting. Flora’s hands were shaking. Now and then she pressed a fist into her hip as if to keep her legs in. “Can she do this by herself?” Susan wasn’t sure, but she thought that they should let her. “If it gets too hard,” she said, “we can ask if she needs help.” But Flora heard them, and their words upset her further. She did not want anybody’s help. Wrench in hand, red-faced, her blue cloths loosening around her, she turned to them and shouted, fierce as they had never seen her. “This is mine to do,” she said. “The spirit asked for me. I’m doing this for George, for me, for George and me. So George will come through this. You will leave me be.” She took a huge breath, one great gulp, turned away, and she started to work faster. Her sloping shoulders quaked, her arms. “Shall we go inside, you think?” Susan asked. “I’d like a drink of water.” Eva nodded at her. “You go on, then. I’ll wait here for her. Poor Flora.”
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