“Mr Jacobs, would you really do anything for money, really?”
“You bet.” He lit a long thin cigar and put his feet on the desk. Each time he put the cigar to his mouth the terrible forearms emerged from his grey dustcoat. She thought of octopuses lurking beneath rocks in shallow pools.
“Would you walk naked in the street for a thousand dollars?”
“I’d do it for five hundred, doll.”
“You’d go to jail.”
“No, I’d be fined. I could pay the fine and still make a profit.”
“Would you drink, you know …” she faded off, suddenly embarrassed by what she had said.
“No, I don’t know.” He smirked. She hated his smirk. He knew what she meant because he had said he would do it before. He had said he would drink piss if there were money in it. She wanted to hear him say it again.
“You know, drink ‘it’.”
“Piss, would I drink piss for money?”
“Yes.” Her pale face burned. “That.”
“How much piss?”
“A teaspoonful.”
“Forty dollars.” It was strange the way he said that, the same tone of voice that he used when he was quoting a price for unredeemed property. It meant he was cheating. It meant, she thought, that he would probably do it for ten dollars.
“I’d do a pint for eighty.”
“What about the other?”
“What ‘other’?”
“You know.”
“Shit?”
She nodded.
“That’d be more expensive. I’d want a hundred and fifty for that.”
“What about dog’s stuff?”
“Two hundred.”
She shook her head, appalled at the thought of it.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you.” She pulled a face. She couldn’t help it. The thought of it. The strange respectable little face, the neat clipped moustache smeared with stinking muck.
“Don’t pull faces at me, young lady.” She heard the tone in the voice and began to drift away. It was the nasty voice.
“I wasn’t,” she said, and then, seeing the rage growing on his face, corrected herself. “I was, but I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”
The confession pacified him. “Look, sweetheart, you don’t live in the real world. In two years’ time I’ll be free, just collecting rent.”
“Who’ll come here then?” Maybe, she thought, there will be someone nice. The thought cheered her. It had never occurred to her before.
“I’m fucked if I know. Somebody. You’ll be stuck here and I’ll be free just going around collecting rent.”
“Oh,” she said, “I won’t be here either.”
He laughed then. “You’ll be here, my little biddy, until you’re a shrunken-up old woman. How will you get out?”
She smiled then, so secretly that he started to get angry again.
“What are you smiling about?” He took his feet down off the desk.
“It’s nothing,” she said, but she was already edging her way along the wall, trying to escape. She couldn’t tell him.
“Tell me.” He was standing now and moving towards her. There was really no point in running. She would have to tell him something. Tell him anything.
“Tell me.” He was beside her now. His hand took her wrist. What would he do? She began to retreat. She started collecting coloured stones under water. She liked doing that. Swimming through the pale green water with the bucket, a beautiful turquoise bucket. The stones lay on the bright sandy bottom.
He was twisting her wrist. It was called “A Chinese Burner”. He had told her that before. He put two hands around her wrist and twisted different ways.
“I’ll get married,” she lied, picking up a glowing ruby-coloured stone, “and go away and have children.”
That satisfied him. He believed in confessions under pain. He believed in pain as he believed in money. He released her wrist and went back to sit behind his desk. Soon he would make a few false entries in the book, then he would go out to lunch, and then it would be afternoon.
During lunch she retreated into the depths of the Lost and Found. She crouched on the floor, reading in the dusty light: “Harvesting is not easy in a large mango tree, for the fruit must be picked carefully and placed gently into the picking boxes.”
There were no photographs of mangoes and she had never seen one.
She waited for the afternoon, placing glowing blue fruit into a pinewood box. She dropped pink tissues into the box and bedded the blue mangoes into it. She loved the feel of them, as soft and gentle as a baby’s cheek.
2.
It was afternoon and he stank of drink. He did not want it straight away. He made some phone calls and she waited, desperately flying through dusty corridors looking for beautiful things.
There was so much ugliness.
She saw shelves of dog turds lined up like buns in a bakery. She saw lengths of electrical flex hanging like whips. She looked for coloured stones but when she picked them up they were warm and squelchy in her hands and smelt of unmistakable filth. She searched on while he talked, looking for the forest, finding at last cool green paths below dripping trees. In the distance the bright blue mangoes shone like magic things and now she walked towards them, her bare feet caressed by a soft sandy path.
He was taking her hand now and leading her into the warehouse.
He wanted her to talk. He tugged at her clothes. The smell of liquor assailed her. She saw the bottled snake in her mind, soaked in formaldehyde. She hated the smell of the drink.
“Tell me you want to fuck me.”
“I want to fuck you.”
She said it. She shed her clothes and stood shivering. She didn’t see him. She tried to walk down the sandy path and reach the mangoes.
She felt the blow. He liked to hit her. They all liked to hit her. Why did they like it? Why did they always want to hit her? They didn’t like her walking down sandy paths. They were jealous and could not see the mangoes.
“I want to fuck you.” She tried to say it better. She tried to look at his hard brown eyes which glinted at her behind the horrible spectacles. She felt the moustache on her lips, trying to eat her alive, and she thought of it covered with muck.
He grunted above her now but she was able to feel nothing. She said the words he wanted her to say.
When it was over she remained lying on the old pile of carpet, looking up through the canyons of shelves towards the distant skylights.
He stood above her, pulling his trousers on.
“You’ve got no tits,” he said, “it’s like fucking a beanpole.” He threw her clothes to her. “Get dressed, for Chrissakes, I can’t stand looking at you.”
The clothes fell on her and she smiled at him. “Could I take home some of that wood?”
“Which bloody wood?” He was embarrassed now. He always was. If she smiled it made it worse.
“The four by two.”
“How will you get it out?”
“I’ll just cut a piece off.”
“All right,” he said, “I’ll cut it for you.”
She’d rather have cut it herself, but she let him do it.
“What do you want it for?”
“I just want it,” she said.
“Well, get dressed.”
As she got dressed she listened to him sawing the wood. He would saw it crooked but it didn’t matter, she only wanted it for practice.
3.
It was late at night.
She lay in her narrow bed in her YWCA room, her wide pale eyes following the footsteps in the corridor above. On the floor beside the bed were several very short sawn pieces of the four by two. She had cut the pieces as thin as possible, eking out her length of “Williamson” wood.
She gazed down at the cut pieces, reached down a long arm and picked one up. The cut was straight, but not straight enough. She got out of bed and picked up a piece of Williamson wood again, putting it over the edge of the dressing table. This one would be perfect. She drew the pencil lines using the set square she had bought at the newsagent’s. Then, very quietly, she began to saw. Sometimes the wood slipped but when she had finished she looked at the cut she had made. The faintest trace of grey pencil line was visible around it. It was a beautiful cut. She smiled at it with satisfaction.