Pinball, 1973

6

She closed the bathroom door behind her. Presently there was the sound of the shower.

The Rat sat up in bed, unable to collect his thoughts, put a cigarette to his mouth, and looked for his lighter. It wasn't in the pocket of his trousers on the table. Couldn't even find any matches. He rummaged through her purse, but no luck. He had no other choice but to turn on the room light and search through all the desk drawers, at last coming up with an old book of matches bearing the name of some restaurant somewhere.

Over the back of the rattan chair on which she'd laid her neatly folded stockings and underwear was draped a finely tailored dress of a mustard color.

And on the night table, alongside a lady's wristwatch, was a Baggagerie shoulder bag, not new, but well cared for.

The Rat sat himself down in the rattan chair opposite and, cigarette still in his mouth, gazed absently out the window.

From his apartment up in the hills, he could take in the random scatter of human activity enveloped in darkness below. From time to time, the Rat would put his hands on his hips, like a golfer standing at the brink of a downhill course, and fix his attention on the scene for hours on end. The slope was dotted with patches of houselights, sweeping down in a slow descent that began from below his very feet. There were dark clumps of trees, small rises in the land, and here and there the white glare of mercury-vapor lamps gleaming off private pools. Where the slope leveled off, an expressway snaked through; a waistband of light cinched across the earth, and beyond that maybe a mile of flat urban sprawl stretched to the sea. The dark sea, so obscure you couldn't make out the water from the sky. And out of the midst of that darkness would surface the orange glow of the beacon, only to vanish. Through all these distinct strata descended a single dark fairway.

A river.

* * *

The Rat met her for the first time at the beginning of September, when the sky still held a hint of summer's brilliance.

He had been looking through the local newspaper's weekly "White Elephant" corner in the classifieds. There among the toddler's playpens and linguaphones and kiddy bikes, he found an electric typewriter. A woman answered the phone, her voice very businesslike, "Well, yes, it has been used for one year, but it still has a year left on the warranty. Monthly payments not acceptable. Could you come down and pick it up yourself?" The terms settled, the Rat got in his car and headed out to the woman's apartment, paid the money, took the typewriter. The price was almost exactly what he'd earned working at odd jobs over the summer.

Slender and on the small side, the woman wore a pretty little sleeveless dress. A whole array of potted ornamentals of various shapes and colors lined the entryway. Neat, prim face, hair tied back in a bun. Her age? Doubtless he would have agreed with anything between twenty-two and twenty-eight.

Three days later he got a phone call, the woman saying she'd found half a dozen ribbons for the typewriter, if he'd care to have them. And when he went to pick them up, he'd invited her to J's Bar and treated her to a couple of rounds of cocktails in return for the ribbons. He really didn't get that far talking to her.

The third time they met was four days after that, at an indoor pool in town. The Rat drove her home and slept with her. The Rat really didn't understand why things ended up like that. He couldn't even remember who came on to whom. Maybe it was all in the way the air was flowing.

After a few days had passed, the relationship with her began to swell within him, making its presence known like a soft wedge driven into his daily life. Ever so slightly, something was starting to get to the Rat. Every time the image of her slender arms clinging round his body came to mind, he'd feel some long-forgotten tenderness spread through him.

He got a clear impression that she, in her own little world, was striving to build up a perfection of sorts. And the Rat knew that it was more than your ordinary effort. She always wore the most tasteful of dresses, which never attracted undue attention, and pretty underwear – nothing frilly, but smart. She put on eau de cologne with the scent of morning vineyards, carefully selected her words when she spoke, abstained from asking superfluous questions, smiled with that "practiced look" she learned from constant scrutiny in the mirror. And each of

these things, in their own little way, made the Rat sad. After seeing her several times, the Rat had guessed her to be twenty-seven. And he was right on the nose.

Her breasts were small, her slender body free of excess flesh and beautifully tanned – though she'd deny having wanted to get a tan, really. High cheekbones and thin lips bespoke a good upbringing and an inner core of strength, yet behind all the shades of expression animating her face, what showed was an utterly defenseless naivete.

She'd graduated from the architecture department of an art school and was working in a planning office, that much she'd told him. Birthplace? Nowhere hereabouts. Came here after graduating. Once a week she'd swim at the pool, and on Sunday nights she took a train to her viola lessons.

Once a week, on Saturday nights, the two of them would get together. Then all day Sunday, the Rat would loll about while she played Mozart.