“Outside?” Idelia glanced rather suddenly at one of the windows in this front room, a parlor. Ancient, water-stained paper of a dark color covered the tenement apartment’s walls, and all the curtains were drawn, all the shades pulled. “No—thank you.”
Griffin felt like he’d totally humiliated himself, as usual. He called the look women gave him when he asked them out “the tarantula”. As if, instead of asking them out, he had extended his open palm with a tarantula on it. He had gotten along with Guy, evasive as Guy was (this was the first time Griffin had actually been inside his apartment), not only because they shared a passion for books, but because they were both unlucky bachelors. Well, he had had Natalie, and Guy had had his wife, so there was always hope for the future…and Griffin felt he was at least more attractive than Guy, though that wasn’t saying much.
“Well, I’ve got to start my shift in a half hour, anyway, so I guess I should be going. You ought to drop in some time, though—I mean, just to look at the books. It’s a nice little place.”
Idelia said nothing in reply; just stared at him, as if to hypnotize him. He was hypnotizing himself, he thought, and he’d better break off; he was starting to feel light-headed just being in her aura of subtle perfume and glowing flesh.
And then, she took two steps to cross the space between them, to float toward him like a somnambulist, and her arms drifted up to him, the sleeves of the bulky sweater sliding back to reveal the thinness of her arms, and her hands alighted on either side of his face, her touch so soft it was like smoke, but cold smoke. A question half rose in Griffin but before he could give it sound, her face too floated toward him, and she pulled his face down and pressed that luxuriant mouth against his.
He put his hands on her arms, as if to push this stranger away, but her tongue slipped into his mouth, cool and anxious, and he found his arms sliding around her instead, to press her whole body to him. He could almost have wrapped his arms around her twice; he was accustomed to Natalie’s broad back, her warm cushions of flesh. This bird-like body with its sharp points of bone and its insubstantial lightness was alien to him. But that alienness of her body and of her actions increasingly stimulated him. He pushed his own tongue into her mouth in turn, and grew aroused, grew desperate to enter her down there as well…
Her hands had moved from his face down to his waist and now slid under his own sweater and the shirt beneath to the bare skin. She began to bunch the material in her hands as if to pull it off him, over his head, and this caused him to open his eyes in surprised desire.
Her eyes were open, too, perhaps had been open all along, and right there in front of his own—so blue, so intense, so very hungry that they frightened him. But it wasn’t just her hunger that suddenly disturbed him. Again, he had been reminded of Guy’s eyes. It was as if Guy had changed form so as to seduce him, but had just now dropped his defenses to reveal himself lurking beneath the mask. It was, Griffin thought later that night when mulling over these events, a ridiculous idea. Had Guy lost three hundred pounds in the two weeks since Griffin had last seen him, and had a sex change operation to boot? But the girl was, of course, a part of Guy, being his daughter—a physical extension of him.
She must be insane. Why would she try to seduce him, a stranger? He was hardly irresistible, he was the first to admit. He thought himself as bland and colorless as a ghost. So why this frantic passion? Yes, she had to be disturbed, and however beautiful she was, that knowledge began to repulse Griffin, and he stepped backwards away from her.
But she clung to the bottom of his sweater, walked forward with him. “Look at me,” she breathed. “Look at me. Want me. Want me to be here…”
Increasingly unnerved, Griffin had to actually take hold of her bony wrists and extricate himself as gently as he could. He gave a very nervous chuckle, embarrassed and horrified for the both of them. “I’m sorry, Miss Hamlin, but I have to go to work now. I’m sorry.” He turned quickly to the door, let himself out into the hall, at any moment expecting the woman to pounce upon him to drag him back…
But she didn’t, and when safely through the threshold, Griffin threw a look back at her. She remained standing where she had been, her eyes on him but seemingly having lost their focus. Huge empty eyes, eyes of a lost child, their color drained from them, and her lipstick smeared across her cheek like blood.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s for the best anyway, if I go away. For the best…”
He faltered, and repeated, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say. And then, he started downstairs. Above him, he heard the door quietly snick shut.
* * *
Fallen leaves scrabbled across the sidewalk like large insects that took flight, swirled briefly, settled to earth again. The leaves were dark red and soon to crumble, flakes of crusted blood drifting down from the dying sun. This sanguine orb made deep blue-purple silhouettes of the old houses along the street, narrow and huddled close together against the chill and seeming to lean over Griffin as if to box him in.
He gave a little shiver, wishing he’d brought his jacket with him, but as he’d related to Idelia the book store was just down the street and around the corner. During the week, he worked first shift hours, but on Saturdays—as now—he was scheduled from evening ‘til closing. He had no social life to sacrifice.
He could still feel Idelia in his mouth; she had seemed more solid there than in his arms, where despite her craving she had been so wispy and brittle. Thinking of her made Griffin dart a glance back over his shoulder at the house he shared with his landlord…a glance up at the second story.
Perhaps he had sensed a gaze upon his back, for someone was indeed staring down at him from an upper window. He stopped, and squinted, realizing that it was more than one person. Again, the buildings were murky with the sun dropping behind them, and there was no light on in that upper room, but he thought he could see three or four figures framed in the glass, crowded close together as if all of them were pressing in to get a look at him. His impression was that they were naked, all of them, but whether they were male or female it was difficult to distinguish. What he did seem to observe, however, was that every one of the pallid figures was wasted to cadaverous thinness, and splotched here and there with inky darkness as if someone had camouflaged them with black paint. These must only have been darker shadows than the rest of the gloom, but Griffin had no further opportunity to tell, for the figure closest to the front drew down the shade, and blocked them all from view.
Griffin remained staring at the window for several moments, as if the shade might be lifted again, but it wasn’t. Did the figures continue to peek at him, however, around its edges?
He decided he must have been mistaken. It must have been only one person, and that must have been Idelia. She had disrobed, and exposed herself, hoping to entice him back, but then had thought better of it. Yes, it could only be that.
Griffin turned back toward his destination and picked up his step, anxious to be out of this dark side street before it closed in on him altogether.
* * *
As he lay in bed that night, staring up at the black pool of his ceiling, he thought of the woman who was staying upstairs from him, even now perhaps in the room just above him.
Why was she visiting, if Guy were away elsewhere? To housesit in his absence?
Tonight, at work, Griffin had attempted—without success—to locate various books that Guy had lent to him and which he’d returned to Idelia. He thought he might like to purchase them so he could peruse them further, after all. He had been thinking about some of the pages Guy had turned down the corner of, or tagged with a scrap of paper as a bookmark, passages he had highlighted with a yellow marker.