"I'm really sorry."
"It's OK."
I think about Frankenstein's monster, the fictional character who indirectly gave his name to this place. She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair ... The murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. That's what Victor Frankenstein's creation did to his fiancée, Elizabeth. Maybe this is the place to have this conversation after all.
"You...," I begin, at the same time that Patrick says, "I..."
"You first," he says.
"No, go on."
"No, really."
"I just ... I don't want to be a stand-in for your wife. Especially not when you're angry with her. That was never the deal."
"No. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
We're silent for a couple of moments. I sip my coffee and vaguely wish I could have a cigarette. Two women walk in and order juice from the bar and then come and sit at the table behind ours.
"So how come you took homoeopathic medicine?" I ask Patrick.
He shrugs. "Someone suggested seeing a homoeopath a while ago."
"What was it like?"
He sips his coffee and I notice that his hands are not shaking anymore.
"It was interesting." He frowns. "They ask you lots of odd questions. They want to know what foods you crave, what you dream about, what you do for a living, and how you feel about it. It's like seeing a therapist in a way."
I saw a therapist once. A gym teacher saw the scars on the tops of my legs and made me go to the doctor. The doctor referred me to some teenage unit at the local hospital. I remember watching a soap opera in the waiting room, which, as well as the smeary TV screen, had green plastic chairs and posters about AIDS. The guy who saw me was a young, moon-faced man with glasses. I told him how amazing it was to be able to give yourself pleasure through pain, and how I knew cutting was addictive but I wasn't addicted yet. I laughed through an account of my childhood. Through all this the therapist simply looked at me in a puzzled way, and a week later I got a letter saying they didn't have the facilities to help me "at this time." I still remember the boxy, thin-walled little room, though. It smelled of smoke, and I noticed a silver foil ashtray on the table by the box of tissues and the vase of plastic blue flowers. That was the moment it occurred to me to try smoking. That eventually replaced the cutting, but I still have the scars. Patrick likes them.
I sip my coffee as Patrick keeps talking about the homoeopathic interview.
"I don't know why they need that level of detail about your life," he says, and laughs briefly. "I only went there with headaches and insomnia."
I finish my coffee. "So you ended up with phosphorus?"
"Yes. Now I think about it, I haven't had any headaches since, although I still don't sleep well."
"Do you actually believe in it?"
"Mmm. I don't know. I saw a documentary that said the remedies are just placebos, and there's nothing in them that can have any effect on anything. They actually dilute the remedies so much that, in chemical terms, all that is left is water. Apparently, homoeopaths argue that water has a memory, which sounds pretty wacky."
"So what did the medicine look like?" I ask him. "Where did you get it?"
"Oh, the homoeopath gave it to me. She had this huge wooden cabinet..." Patrick opens his arms about three feet wide and, with one finger pointing up on each hand, tries to show the scope of this thing. I notice that he doesn't look at his hands as he does this, but at the wall behind me. It suddenly occurs to me that when people describe size this way, they're relying on perspective to help them. He's not saying, It's this big. He's saying, It would look this big from here if it was over there.
He goes on, "It had all these little drawers labelled alphabetically. She opened one of them up and there were lots of little glass bottles inside, each containing tiny white sugar pills. She explained to me that the medicine is originally a liquid, but that the little pills absorb it and make it more convenient to take. Sorry. This must be boring."
"No, I'm really interested. I just had no picture in my mind of what any of this stuff actually looks like." I try to run my fingers through my hair, but there's some huge tangle at the front, so I try to tease it out as I speak. "So, do you have to get these pills from a homoeopath?"
"Oh no." Patrick laughs. "Don't you ever go into Boots? They sell homoeopathic remedies everywhere now. You can get them at any health food shop as well. I get Nux Vomica for indigestion. You just buy it over the counter."
"Hmm," I say. "That's interesting. I never realized it was so mainstream."
"It's big business now," he says. "I've got some Nux in my office if you want to see what the tablets actually look like."
"OK."
Most people's offices tend to be a mess. I've seen people who seem to be trapped in their rooms, still working at eight P.M. because perhaps there really is no way out across towering piles of old journals, books, and printed e-mails. Patrick's room, on the other hand, is large, square, and spotless. It doesn't exactly have the shine of the Monster Munch bistro, but you can see why he likes having coffee there. He has an L-shaped desk arrangement similar to mine, but his tables are larger and one has a glass top. The glass-topped one faces the door and has nothing on it apart from a heavy translucent paperweight and a white lamp. The other one faces the window and has nothing on it apart from his computer, and looks as if it's been polished recently. The room is so large that there is also space for a coffee table and four comfortable chairs.
He shuts the door behind us and walks over to his desk drawer.
"Here," he says, taking out a small brown glass bottle and offering it to me.
I put my library books down on the coffee table and take the bottle from him. The label says Nux Vom 30.125 tablets. An instruction on the side tells you to take a tablet every two hours in "acute" cases and three times a day otherwise. I unscrew the cap and peer inside at a pile of tiny flat tablets, pure white like miniature aspirins.
Now Patrick is locking the door and closing his blinds.
"How forgiven am I?" he says.
"Hmm?" I say, looking up, but he has already grabbed me and is kissing me hard. "Patrick," I say, once he stops. But what am I going to say next? Despite—or, weirdly, because of—yesterday, a familiar sensation trickles through me and instead of talking about how this isn't a good idea, I allow him to remove my jumper and pull down my jeans and knickers and then bend me over the glass table, holding me by my hair. My breasts press against the cold glass, and, while Patrick fucks me, I wonder what they look like from underneath.
"God, Ariel," he says afterwards, wiping his cock with a Kleenex as I pull my jeans back up. "I don't know if you bring out the best or the worst in me."
"I think it's the worst," I say, smiling.
He smiles back. "Thanks for forgiving me."
I laugh. "I'm not sure if I have yet." I pick up my books and head for the door. "Oh well. Guess I'd better go and see what my new roommates are like."
Patrick throws the Kleenex away. "Roommates?"
"'Refugees' is what Mary's calling them. People from the Newton Building. I'm sharing my office with two of them."
"Oh. Bad luck." Patrick leans against the glass-topped desk and looks at me. "Well, you're always welcome here."
"We'll get caught."
"Yes. Probably." He sighs. "Back to hotels then."
"We'll see." I soften this with a naughty smile, since something's just occurred to me. "Oh, Patrick?" I say with my hand on the door handle, as though it's an afterthought.