Relief flooded her. She was to be forgiven. “I won’t be a minute.” She again started toward the bedroom to change.
“Stay. I like it like that,” he said, and there was a spark of something in his eyes. Interest. Or humor. Maybe he was laughing at her. He did that. She’d gotten used to it; it was just his way. Still, there were times it made her feel bad. Not that he thought she was a clown or a fool, but that he didn’t care enough to hide it from her. This time, though, the spark was ambiguous. It really could be interest, the kind a man has in a woman.
It had been a long time since she’d seen anything in men’s eyes but a passing smirk, if they noticed her at all. Usually, despite the red of dress and hair and lips, they didn’t see her anymore. That spark in Mr. Marchand’s eyes thrilled her. She let the caftan slip an inch to show the top of her breast. No more than that. Mr. Marchand would not be pleased by crude behavior.
“Why don’t you pour yourself a drink?” he said. “Make yourself at home.”
Again he looked around the ruin of her apartment. This time she did not suffer the instant of clarity. The offer of a drink made her realize how much she needed a little courage, a little comfort. Careful not to seem too eager, to move too quickly, she followed the path to the cupboard. The bottle was still on top, the cap off, lost in the clutter on the floor. Shielding the bottle with her body so he wouldn’t see it was already open, she found her tumbler and poured. “Can I get you a drink, honey?”
“No, thank you.”
No, thank you. He was being a gentleman, a gentle man. This was going to be a good evening. A date, she remembered. Smiling, she took a drink before she turned around. She needed to get one sizable shot into her, then she could sip politely.
“Come sit,” he ordered, a hint of sharpness returning.
Holding her drink in both hands so it wouldn’t slop, she scurried back. It would be just like her to ruin everything by being stupid, trying his patience, saying the wrong thing. The eggshells she walked on were fragile and the breakage cost dear.
Don’t say the F word. Don’t gulp your drink. Don’t laugh too loud. Don’t talk too much. Don’t burp. Please, please, please don’t let me fart, Lord, she prayed as she made her way to the chair he’d so peremptorily cleared for her.
“Aren’t you going to sit, honey?” she asked, as she lowered herself carefully into the chair. Like a lady, not plopping; lowering.
He smiled.
God, but she loved that smile.
Even through the bourbon, and the excitement, and the fear, she knew he wasn’t smiling because the offer pleased him. He smiled because to sit in her home appalled him. Still, she could pretend, and so she did. “Let me tidy a chair for you,” she offered and tried to rise. The chair and the booze conspired to suck her back down and she laughed.
“Oops-a-daisy,” she said as she fell back, drink in hand, sloshing onto the chair arm. Bad. She was acting drunk. Contenting herself with the fact that she had not said the F word by accident, she smiled up at him.
He set the package down near her feet and pulled up an ottoman. Tilting it so the papers, shoes, and two purses she had forgotten she had slid off into the rest of the litter, he moved it so he could sit facing her. Before he sat down, he stared for a moment at the nubbled brown fabric scarred with cigarette burns and, in a flash of ESP, she knew he was thinking of getting his handkerchief out and spreading it over the top. That he didn’t, she took as a compliment and smiled as he sat on the stool at her feet.
“It’s so nice having you here,” she said and meant it so much she nearly ruined everything by crying. “It’s like family, you know.”
“Like family,” he said in a distant voice, a sound from a long way off, coming through years of darkness and cold.
For reasons she did not identify, she shivered. “You brought something,” she said brightly to make him come back from wherever his voice had gone.
“It’s a present,” he said. “I need you to do something special for me tonight.”
Blow job, she hoped, but he didn’t act like a man who wanted a sexual favor.
Methodically, he began unwrapping her present, talking as he did. She would rather have unwrapped it herself while he watched. That would have been more special, more intimate, but she didn’t spoil the moment by pushing what she wanted on him. A present was enough.
He was here, and sitting in her home, and giving her a present. She said those words in her mind because she wanted to remind herself how happy she was.
The gift wasn’t wrapped in white paper as she had first thought but plastic, two enormous sheets of it. Painters’ drop cloths or clear shower curtains. As he unwound them, he took out roll after roll of packing tape, the superstrong kind with fibers all through it.
“Are we building something?” she asked. The tape and the plastic were giving her a bad feeling. Nobody wrapped gifts in plastic and tape you had to cut with a knife.
“Sort of,” he replied. “A box for a friend of mine.” He smiled more to himself than to her. The bad feeling didn’t go away. She poured bourbon on it to quiet it down.
At last, the plastic and the tape had been set aside in a neat pile, and all that remained was the gift loosely wrapped in brown paper.
No long-stem roses for her. What it was she couldn’t guess.
“Before I give this to you I want to tell you a story,” he said and, looking her in the eyes, his gloved hands resting on his knees, he began: “Once upon a time there was an ugly duckling… ”
“Does she turn into a beautiful swan?” Her hand flew to her mouth. She had interrupted him. He hated it when she interrupted him. Before she could say she was sorry, he went on.
“No. This is a true story. In real life, ugly ducklings, at least the ones that aren’t savaged by dogs or eaten by cats, grow up to be big ugly ducks. Big fat ugly quackers,” he said. Relieved he’d not gotten angry at her interruption, she scarcely noticed the hard edge his words took on.
“This ugly duckling was a nosey little bird, a spying little bird. She had very sharp eyes, and she saw things that she wasn’t supposed to see.”
The set of his mouth, the mocking way he was telling the story, cut through the alcohol, and she realized he was talking about the Woman in Red, about her. She knew this the way she knew things, the way the tarot had unlocked for her.
She was the spying little bird.
She tried to think of what she could have seen that she wasn’t supposed to. He knew she’d been watching the office, but even so he hadn’t done anything interesting. He’d gone over to Polly Whatsername on the bench that day. Anybody could have seen that. That was about the most interesting thing he’d done. Other than that, it was clients and business.