the invention of pleasure 5

…from my novel, The Invention of Pleasure:

He sat down and she cut a piece of cake and put it on the best plate she could find. She gave him a silver fork and a soft linen napkin. She wished she had coffee but she poured him a cool glass of water in her last remaining unchipped glass.

“Sometimes water is best,” she said putting it all in front of him. He ignored the fork and devoured the piece of cake. He made an ‘umm’ sound that she liked. She didn’t know how to feel: young, old, smart, stupid, glad, sad. She would be happy to feed him the entire cake, piece by piece, until it was gone and something was magically resolved. After a second piece of cake and draining the tall glass of water, he sat back and touched the package, which had been resting on his lap since he sat down. With both hands, he raised it up.

“Can you hold this for me? Just for tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. He was looking into her eyes and waiting for more questions; but Lou knew she would hold the package for him, so why bother asking questions? He understood and nodded. He handed it to her and said, “It’s heavy.”

She took it and was proud of her strong tanned forearms. Her bedroom seemed the safest place. On the bedside table there was a lamp and a copy of Shakespeare. It was a beautiful version of all the plays and poems printed on thin onionskin paper, bound in blue leather and held in a strong slipcase. It was old and worn like a relic from a rich library and it looked too luxurious for Lou’s house; she slipped the book out of the case and was pleased when the package slipped in perfectly.

“Can’t beat Shakespeare,” Lou said, “for pretty well anything! Even a hiding place.”

The Postman was standing in the kitchen, near the sink; he was looking into her bedroom. He moved towards her but she walked out of the bedroom and he followed her into the living room, her studio.

“I’m not hiding it,” he said. “I’m just asking you to hold it for me.”

She reached back and took the tie out of her hair, letting it loose, turning around quickly. His eyes followed her hair sweeping by like a big wing.

“The truth?” she said. His eyes came back to hers: “Careful! I was taught by nuns.”

“You’re not Catholic, though,” he said quickly and confidently.

“No,” she said. “For some reason my stupid father thought I would get a better education in a Catholic school! I hated the nuns! English nuns were the meanest people on the planet!”

“No, no! French nuns are the worst! Québécois nuns: they’re small but very nasty! I know lots of dirty songs about nuns if you want to sing some day. French songs.”

She laughed and said, “I hear you’re a separatist.”

He shrugged, as she knew he would.

“That’s the same shrug Trudeau has.” He said something in French about Trudeau; she asked him what he said.

“I said, ‘Trudeau is a nun.’”

“I hope you’re not an FLQ,” Lou said. She knew he would say nothing and that’s what he did. “Maybe you’re like Robin Hood,” Lou said. “Do they have him in Québec?”

“On TV,” he replied and he sang a line from the show’s theme song.

“That makes Trudeau the Sheriff of Nottingham, I guess,” Lou said and the Postman laughed; any worry gone from his face.

“Every pauper is a prince,” he said, touching his chest. He was smiling and still playing along with her joke: “We must fight to save our kingdom from the…” – struggling to find the right word in English.

“Usurper,” Lou said. The Postman looked at her and shook his head to show that he didn’t know the word. She said: “The one who takes your land.” They silently watched each other for a long moment. Lou was remembering an angry young man and the way he had used that nasty word. “Usurper,” she said again, “the one who takes your home.”

They were in the studio near the kitchen and Lou pointed at the cake. “Why don’t you take the rest of the cake? Even if you are an FLQ!” He just looked at her for a while. Usually she could hear the clock and count the seconds but, now, the world was silent.

“I have to say something,” he said.

She was wide-eyed and waiting when he said, “I have to say that you are very beautiful.”

Did she know it was coming? No. Did she want it? Yes, of course, she wanted it. But she was stunned anyway. She looked down through her body; she wasn’t looking with her eyes but with some other vision and she could see her organs and her arms and hands and feet and her legs. He was saying something else; she didn’t hear because she was wandering around inside her head and body. Her body had turned away from him and now she heard his words coming from behind her.

“What?” she asked abruptly.

“I said: I have to go. Thank you for your help.”

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