“Could I speak with Ms Stien,” Henderson repeated firmly. Speak ‘with’, he thought. Good God.
“Ms Stien is not within her domicile.”
For some reason this pedantry made Henderson even angrier.
“Did you learn that at doorman school? Look, you know me. And I saw you speaking to her, for Christ’s sake. I just want a word.”
Bra looked at his fingers. With the edge of one thumbnail he slid something from beneath the other.
“I told you. Ms Stien is not within—”
“Her domicile. I know.” Henderson forced a smile. “I don’t believe you. I’m a friend of Ms Stien. If you can’t let me speak to her I shall report you to—” he couldn’t think to whom. “I shall report you.”
Bra waggled his forefinger and leant towards the gap. Reflexively, Henderson did the same.
“Go suck your cock,” Bra breathed. His breath had a pungent, pickled odour, as if he lived exclusively on a diet of capers.
Henderson recoiled, too surprised and nauseated to retort. If he had had his sabre he would have driven it through the gap in the door and skewered Bra’s narrow body.
“You’ll regret this!” he shouted. He should have sworn as colourfully back at him, he realized seconds later, but he felt he had already made something of a fool of himself, a capital crime in the Englishman’s book. Reverting to type, he gathered what he could of his dignity around him and smiled pityingly at Bra, now back behind his lectern. Common little man, he said to himself. Serf. Nation of peasants, what do you expect? Diet of turnips and liverwurst. Vitamin deficiency, rickets, inbreeding. Subnormal, subhuman…He checked himself, feeling suddenly ashamed. He’d have him in the gas chambers next. The man was only doing his job — albeit uncourteously — there was no need for such poisonous hatred.
He walked up the street until he found a phone, inserted a dime and prodded out Irene’s number.
“Hi there, this is Irene. I’m really sorry I’m not in right now—”
Answering machine. It was like trying to see the President.
“—promise I’ll get back to you. Beeee.”
Henderson wanted to say he was sorry, explain everything, categorize his emotions.
“Irene. This is Henderson…I’ll phone tomorrow.” He hung up. His voice had sounded stilted, pompous. She’d never phone back someone who spoke like that…He stood alone on the street, balked, frustrated, all his good intentions stymied and snookered. What more could he do? There was nothing for it but to hire the car, collect Bryant and head south.
PART TWO. The South
Chapter One
Henderson hired his car. He had asked for a medium-sized model, yet what he got was bigger than anything on the roads in Britain. The girl at the rental agency assured him that this was the standard size. They had larger cars if he wanted one. He said no.
In the car the bonnet seemed to stretch ahead like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. He slotted the gear into ‘drive’, touched the accelerator and the car pulled strongly away. He couldn’t hear the noise of the engine. The power steering, he discovered, allowed him to manoeuvre with two fingers. The thought of barrelling down the freeways in this behemoth suddenly sent a tremor of boyish excitement through his body, displacing his gloom and disappointment. God, this is fun, he thought as he surged up the ramp from the underground car park, it’s like some sort of massive toy.
By the time he had driven home, collected his suitcase, and then driven uptown to Melissa’s apartment, the steely blue car had lost the glass from a tail light, acquired a scratch running the length of one side and received a dent in the left hand front wing. Furthermore, on the course of his journey he had been described as a cunt, a fuckhead, a jiveass honky, a ‘sackashit’ and a ‘muthafuck-ah’ by the other snarling drivers he had fouled up or interfered with in some way or other. Pedestrians — meek, timid creatures in Britain — had kicked his tyres and thumped the bodywork with their fists. One particularly irate jaywalker went so far as to gob — greenily and with astonishing volume — on his windscreen. He managed to park not too far from Melissa’s door but sat still in his car for five minutes or so (windscreen wipers going) trying to regain his composure.
♦
Melissa welcomed him at the door, Candice yapping in her armpit.
“Hello, darling.” Their cheeks touched, he felt her hair sharp on his face.
“Candice, don’t shout at Henderson.”
They went through into the main room. Gervase joined in the shrill noise. He thought: if we ever get married again, those dogs are out — pronto.
“She’s just packing her things. Won’t be a second.” Melissa sat down beside him on the enormous sofa and took his hand.
“Are you OK, baby? You look tired.”
Henderson told her of his troubled night — post-mugging — of the garbage men and their matutinal seminar group. Melissa looked genuinely sympathetic. She put her hand on the back of his neck and scratched his nape gently. It was an automatic gesture; Henderson recalled it from their early days; it brought him out in a warm rush of affectionate goose-pimples.
“The sooner we get you installed here the better,” she said.
He felt grateful and secure. Melissa had things under control. He was suddenly certain he would be happy with her. He put his hand on her shoulder: so thin, so neat. The silk of the eau-de-nil blouse was cool under his palm. He felt the thin strap of her bra. It would be silk too, he knew: crisp and clean on that day, with a discreet and pretty edging of lace.
“I can’t wait,” he said, with a slight tremble of sincerity in his voice, and touched her neck with his lips. This was a mistake, he realized at once, remembering how she sprayed her neck liberally with perfume. He sat up, his mouth full of a sour foreign taste. Bryant came in.
“Could I have a drink of something?” he asked, swallowing acrid saliva. “Coke? Seven-Up?”
“Bryant, honey, can you get Henderson a Coke?”
“Why can’t he get it himself?”
“Bryant?”
“It’s all right,” Henderson said. “No problem. I’ll go.”
He drank some water in the brilliant kitchen. When he came back, Melissa had gone somewhere, and Bryant was standing alone in the room.
“Well,” he said. “Yes, whe…well.”
Bryant looked at him as if he were slightly mad. She was wearing blue striped trousers that stopped at mid-calf, a very old faded grey T — shirt and an expensive looking leather jacket, all pockets, flaps and buckles. Her hair was tousled and uncombed.
Spoilt brat, he thought. Those dogs wouldn’t be the only inhabitants of the Wax household to get a rude awakening when he moved in. He put his hands in his pockets and looked around the room as if he were seeing it for the first time. This is absurd, he thought. She is a fourteen-year-old girl and I am a thirty-nine-year-old man. So why do I feel nervous? He stopped himself just in time from whistling ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’. Bryant looked at him, apparently quite relaxed. It’s true, he reflected, she is very cool and mature for a teenager. He thought of himself at her age; his awkward, boiling adolescence. His freezing fearful schooldays, the chasms of timidity, the deserts of anguish he had daily to traverse. No points of comparison there. What had been wrong with his education, his environment, his family? Think what torments he would have avoided if he had been like Bryant.
“Where’s Irving?” he said, with a gasp of relief, finally thinking of something to say.