Whenever I saw him there, I looked up at the balcony of the second-floor apartment opposite and more often than not I caught the curve of her profile as she watered her plant pots or a flash of colour from her dress as she threw open her doors to the early evening air. To anyone else their presence at such times would have seemed nothing other than coincidence, but to me it was as if there were an invisible thread of electricity that ran between them, animating first his hands on the bike engine, then hers on the petals of her bougainvillea. They were utterly aware of each other at those times. Then, one day, I was sent to enquire of Dub whether he was ever going to sit down to dinner with his family again and, as I approached, BabyLu waved to me from her balcony and I waved back and in that instant Dub looked up and followed my gaze to her and there was no reason for him not to wave at her too. She was down on the forecourt within a few minutes.
‘You’re gonna polish that bike away to nothing, Elvis,’ she said.
‘I like things to look good, my lady,’ Dub replied.
‘Shallow, huh?’ she said, leaving Dub chewing on air for an answer. ‘Hey, Joseph,’ she turned to me. ‘I’ve seen you walking around. Are you well?’ She’d remembered my name and I felt my face grow hot. ‘Eddie sent lots of food today and then rang to say he wasn’t coming. You two want to help me eat it? I hate to waste it. Still the village girl at heart.’
‘I should get back,’ I said, looking at Dub.
‘Girl needs a chaperone, Joseph,’ she said. ‘You look like a gentleman, whereas you … ’ she said to Dub. ‘You look like trouble.’
Her apartment surprised me. I’d expected it to be full of new things but the furniture was old and heavy like the narra wood at Aunt Mary’s. She had a dresser and an armoire and a long, dark dining table with six chairs. Every surface was crammed with things: vases with paper flowers, ornaments, glass decanters, stuffed toys and books. A lot of books. I’d imagined a hotel lobby, of the type I’d seen in some of Aunt Mary’s magazines, but the place was more like a museum or maybe a library, and it was clean, no dust anywhere. I leaned in to study some of the titles, my hands clasped behind my back. ‘They’re real,’ BabyLu pouted, but she was laughing. ‘You can even touch them!’ I picked one up: Thomas Hardy, an English author. Aunt Mary had a few of his books too. ‘I’ve read quite a lot of them now,’ she said. ‘Eddie likes me to be in if he calls.’ She shrugged. ‘You can borrow it if you want.’
Dub moved around the room looking at things. He smiled at a figurine; it was not dissimilar to something his mother might possess. He moved over to an armchair and, lifting a pile of papers from its seat, flopped into it. He looked around for somewhere to place the papers but every nearby surface was full. He looked at the floor, at BabyLu and then at me, the pile in his outstretched arms. I affected not to notice, my eyes on BabyLu. She smiled at me as she turned away and walked into the kitchen. Dub placed the pile precariously on the chair’s armrest. He sat back, studying the objects around him, his hands folded neatly in his lap like a boy waiting outside the headmaster’s office. I eyed the pile of papers for a second or two and then stepped forward to retrieve it. I placed it on the dining table. Dub shot me an uncertain smile. BabyLu walked back into the room with a jug of water. She set it on the dining table, took glasses and plates out of one of the cabinets. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to heat things up,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen but I can hear you if you speak up.’
I felt like an impostor, invited to eat at this flat as if I wasn’t Dub’s houseboy, but his friend. I hesitated at the kitchen doorway, nodded at the parcels of food as she unwrapped them. ‘I can do that,’ I said, but she laughed at me and pushed me back into the dining room. She pointed at a chair like a schoolteacher. I sat down.
BabyLu wedged the kitchen door wide open so that we could hear each other more easily as she threw the food into pans. She talked as she worked. ‘Most of the furniture was here when Eddie bought the flat. Belonged to the previous owner. A professor.’ She peered round the doorframe at me, her eyes gleaming. ‘Eddie wanted to get rid of it but I liked it. I didn’t have anything much of my own anyway. Most of the books were here when I came too but some I bought myself. Eddie brings me books sometimes, but he only likes ones with a particular kind of cover.’ She stopped stirring to count off on her fingers: ‘Hard covers. Leathery. Gold lettering.’ She picked up the spoon again. ‘He doesn’t care who writes them. He never looks.’ I wondered about the kind of man who chose a book like he would an ornament, buying it for its binding, as if opening it to discover its real value was out of the question.
Dub was quiet but it didn’t matter because BabyLu talked for all three of us, as if all the loneliness and boredom that besieged her in this apartment full of things had, while we were here, only a brief time to purge itself. ‘I used to be Eddie’s maid, but then his wife caught us fooling and gave him an ultimatum. He brought me here. It’s ok I guess. I left the village when I was fifteen. I have nine brothers and sisters. I’m not used to silence. It’s unnatural, don’t you think?’ She peered out from behind the doorframe again to solicit our responses.
BabyLu was talking even as she brought the food out, but while she served it she fell silent. She arranged the food carefully on each plate, her every movement reflected in the polished dark wood of the table, the bird’s egg blue of her shirt becoming sky mirrored in water. Hers was the only movement or sound in the room then, for instead of picking up the weft and continuing to weave a conversation, Dub and I watched her work. BabyLu kept her eyes on the plates, but as we looked on her breathing quickened, and when she was done her colour was high.
The food was good and there was plenty of it. Dub picked at his plate and tried now not to stare at her. Still, she caught him watching her several times and glanced away quickly as if bashful, though I thought once that she looked pleased. She ate carefully, self-consciously, and when at last Dub witnessed her splash sauce down her chin, she blushed and, flashing a wounded look at him, cried out: ‘Psychic surgery! Do you believe?’ We stared at her, astonished. She pointed with her spoon at the pile of papers Dub had moved off the armchair earlier, that she had pushed aside to make room for the food. On the top was a flyer: The Reverend Julio Orenia, World Famous Psychic Surgeon, Is Coming to Heal You! I’d seen the same flyer just a few days ago. America had brought one home only for Aunt Mary to remove it, though it was soon replaced with another. They were everywhere, especially thick in the vicinity of the Espiritista chapel from where they’d no doubt originated. BabyLu wiped her chin stealthily, spoke in a rush. ‘Such people are extraordinary, don’t you think? He’s restored eyesight and made people walk again. He’s cured cancer! And all with the power of spirit. He doesn’t claim it for himself.’
Dub studied the flyer, his full spoon poised near his lips. ‘He calls it a prayer meeting but people will have to pay to go,’ he said softly, cautiously.
‘You’d pay to see any doctor,’ she said hotly.
Dub started laughing. ‘But he’s not a doctor.’ BabyLu’s eyes glittered at him. He shot me a look but I stayed quiet.
‘Well, I will be going! Eddie has promised to take me.’