The Box

Chapter 14

She was drinking something orange and oily and when she saw him coming to her table she was not sure whether she liked seeing him or not. Of course he was new. But it seemed to her there had been something else before, something she missed.

“You looked,” she said to him, “as if you were heading straight for my table.”

“I was. May I sit down?”

She nodded and watched him sit.

“You look positively like you’d had a good day at the office.”

“I did,” he said.

They did not talk while the waiter took his order, and when the waiter was gone they still had nothing to say. Bea sipped and then licked her lips, which were sticky and sweet. She concentrated on that, trying to forget the platitude she had used on him, and that he had answered it in kind. Quinn lit a cigarette.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

“Now that I’m in civilization I’m taking up all kinds of civilized habits.”

She put her glass down and looked at him. “You say that without a smile and it sounds nasty. You say that with a smile and it sounds cagey.”

“Which did I do?”

“Don’t you know? You did both.”

Quinn waited till the waiter had put down the drink and left the table. He made out to himself that this was the only reason he didn’t say anything right away. Then he folded his arms on the table.

“You know what you sound like, Bea?”

“As if I disliked you.” She gave a small laugh and said, “Strange, isn’t it? I don’t know why.”

Quinn did not know what to do with that answer and looked into his glass. He drank and thought, how did I used to do it? I don’t remember ever sitting like this, not knowing what next.

“And then again,” she was saying, “if you were to ask me right now, now I don’t dislike you at all.”

This did not help him at all. He lost all touch with her and felt only suspicion.

“Look,” he said. “Naturally you don’t like me. First of all, you don’t know me from Adam. Second of all, what you do know you got from somebody else.”

“What was that?”

“You’re thick with the mayor, aren’t you? So naturally, listening to him-”

He knew he had missed as soon as he heard himself say the sentence. Bea sat up and looked at him as from a distance.

“You know something, Quinn?” She flicked one nail against her glass and made it go ping. “I just caught why I don’t like you. When I don’t like you.”

“I’m interested as all hell,” he said. The anger he felt seemed to swell his face. She went ping on the glass again and that was the worst thing about her, he thought idiotically.

“Here you sit talking to me, but not with me. Oh, no. It’s not even about me. It’s about the mayor. You have some thing with the mayor and nothing else matters, and when you get around to going to bed with me, that will probably be from spite too.”

Quinn sat hunched with his arms on the table. Then he pushed away and picked up his glass. He kept looking at her when he tipped up the glass and let the ice cubes slide down so that they hit his teeth.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” she said.

He put the glass down and lit a cigarette. I’ll give her this silence, he thought, so she’ll be as confused as I am.

“And now I’ll tell you why I like you when I do like you,” she said, but he could not let her finish. He did not want to hear what she had to say about liking.

He exhaled and said, “Are you drunk?”

“No.” She frowned, and he thought it could have been anger. “I’m not drunk,” she said, “but I think I’m going to be.”

“You’re sweet,” he said. “Oh, are you ever a sweet female.”

“Reserve judgment, Quinn. Wait till I’m drunk.”

He now found that everything went very much easier. It was now easy to show her his anger, though he had no idea what he was angry about. He made out it was she who caused the anger and that game was fine with her. It was fine with her because now she felt animated. She was not bored. She ordered another drink for him and for herself and tried to insult him by paying for them. He let her pay for them and so insulted her back.

“For a pushover,” he said, “you sure do all the most repulsive things.” The liquor was starting to scramble his thinking and he sat wondering what he had meant by the remark.

“But I’m no pushover,” she said. “For that you’d have to ask me to go to bed and then I’d have to say yes, just because you asked. None of that has happened, you know.”

“And it won’t either.”

“You are very drunk, Quinn, very drunk,” and she looked slightly past his left ear. Then she got up. “I’m going home,” she said.

“And you’re not going to ask me if I want to come?”

“No. You’re no pushover, Quinn. You’re a hard man of principles.” Then she laughed and walked away from the table.

He watched her walk away and how her hips moved under the dress. The dress made a fold over one hip and then over the other. Quinn suddenly felt he had never seen anything more exciting in all his life.

He sat and wondered if it was the liquor making him dull and stupid, letting her walk out this way, letting her hit him in the head with her lousy insults, swapping insults back and forth like two idiots. He sat a short while longer and enjoyed disliking her. Then he left.

When the servant showed him into the room she did not even look up. She sat on a very red couch in the sunlight, because she had opened the shutters. The sunlight made a glow in her hair, it caused round shadows under her chin and her breasts, and the brown liquor in her glass looked almost like gold. When the door closed behind Quinn he felt the heat in the room. She did nothing about it. This heat was just there.

“God,” he said, “you look sullen.”

“I’m getting drunk.”

He swore again, feeling stupid. A bottle of bourbon sat on the window sill and when he picked that up she nodded her head in the direction where he could find a glass. He poured straight liquor which felt warm. Then he walked around in the room.

“More small talk?” she said. “You working up to more small talk?”

“No,” he said. “It’s simple. I don’t want to be with you and not have you talk.” He took a gulp from his glass and felt the liquor make a hot pathway inside him.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Get nasty. I invite it. Always do.”

He turned around and saw her drink from her glass He watched her throat move.

“You don’t invite a thing,” he said. “That’s why you irritate so.” He listened to her exhale after the drink, a heavy breath making him think of moisture, and he felt excited.

“All the time,” she said. “All the time like that,” and her sullenness fit the warm room, went with the body curve which she showed sitting there. “You bastard,” she said. “Why don’t you go away!” She never raised her eyes but kept looking down, past her lap where she held the glass.

Quinn went to the couch and sat down next to her.

They did not touch and she did not look up. “Listen,” he said. “Let’s start all over.”

“Bah!”

“What’s ‘bah’ here?”

“Let’s start all over. That’s all I ever do, Quinn.”

“Listen. I didn’t mean any big discussion by that.”

“I know. Just little remarks for you. Just nothing.”

He suddenly felt like reaching over to touch her, to touch her with an unexpected emotion. He wanted her to feel comfort from his hand. But then she looked up and he didn’t move.

“Bea,” he said.

She looked half asleep. She looked at him while he put out his hand and then he touched her arm. He put his hand around her bare arm and after one slow moment of this touch she closed her eyes and tears ran out. They rolled down her cheeks and glittered in the sun. Quinn pulled his hand back as if he had been bitten.

She opened her eyes and just stared at him.

He drank from his glass, finishing it. “I don’t know why I pulled away like that. I’m even sorry. You know that?” He shook his head, to get rid of the fog. “I’m even sorry. And I’m sorry that you have to cry.”

She nodded her head but said nothing. She leaned way over the arm of the couch and reached for the bottle on the window sill. Quinn watched how her body stretched.

“You pour,” she said and gave him the bottle. “I need to get drunk.”

“No,” he said. “You don’t need to.”

“Yes, I do. Because I know why I’m crying.”

She was not actually crying but there were still tears in her eyes, though she seemed to pay no attention to that. She held her glass out and said, “I’m crying because I have absolutely no idea why I am here. You understand that, Quinn?”

He poured for her and then for himself and then he took a swallow. For a moment there was a muscle fight in his throat but then he swallowed.

“I was going to ask you,” he said. “Why you’re here.”

“I told you. I don’t know. Do you know why you’re in this town?”

“I came in a box.”

“What makes you think I didn’t come in a box? What makes you think everybody gets out the way you did?” She gave a drunken smile. “Anyway, for a while it looked like you got out.”

“What’s that you said?”

“You think anybody comes here of their own free will? Everybody comes here to get rid of what’s best left behind. That’s why Okar is so dirty.”

“I wish you’d said that while I was sober,” he said. “I really do. Or not at all.” And he took a long swallow.

When he looked at her again, he thought she was going to start crying again, not because of her voice or some look in her eyes, but because he thought she was on that kind of a drunk. But she had not been drunk when she had cried before, and now instead of crying she started to laugh. Now she was drunk. This made Quinn angry again and he watched her throat while she laughed. Her throat came in and out of focus and it moved with her laughter, as if a large pulse was pumping in there. Quinn watched this and felt there had never been anything so exciting. He put his hand on her throat and she stopped laughing immediately.

It was very quiet now and again very warm and the throat moved under his hand like a pulse.

“Quinn,” she said. “Not so hard.”

“No,” he said. “Gently,” and moved his hand gently. She leaned back so that he could move his hand on her.

“You have a heavy hand,” she said. “I like your hand. Hold still.”

He held still and felt the fabric between his hand and her body and for a moment he had the serious thought that he might now go crazy. Then he clamped his hand into her and the feeling went and became excitement.

“Quinn,” she said. “You’re too quick. This is the Orient. Slow, Quinn. Slow.”

He laid his hand on the round of her thigh and imagined that his hand was sleeping there. It was not sleeping, but it was something to imagine this and to be so awake. He took liquor in his mouth and let it run down his throat. He thought of hot oil. She suddenly reached for him and ripped the front of his shirt. She only moved her arm and her hand, doing this, and then she put her hand on his chest so that it lay there very quietly, like a bird sleeping.

“You,” he said. “Listen.” He put his glass on the floor very carefully, hoping not to get dizzy. “This slow is too slow.”

“Yes,” she said, “open me up.”

“Yes. Not here. Where’s the other room, the other, goddamn it-”

“I like you on this couch, Quinn. Your black hair on the red couch.”

The heat poured into the window and made the couch seem more red than it was. He leaned over to open her dress and felt her move under him. He fumbled and saw that his hands were shaking.

“Take my glass,” she said. “I’ll do it,” and gave him her glass.

He took the glass and threw it across the room while he watched her. She tore something but could not get the dress open and then he grabbed her and said, “To hell with the dress,” but that turned into a fight. She scratched the back of his neck and then he found that he was biting her arm. From somewhere the anger was back now, or a weird mixture of muscle strength and sex strength and they held each other apart, trying hard to focus. This might have been because of the liquor or because of a true confusion, and they had to let go of each other. I’m breathing like an animal, he thought, but an animal wearing clothes. He hunched on the red couch and watched her get up. She went to the door, rattling it before she got it open. Then she yelled something which he thought was like a scream. All this Arabic is like a scream in the ear, he thought, and therefore I don’t understand the language-He shook his head and wanted to get up, go after her, when he saw that she was back in the room and the servant was with her.

He was an old man, with beard stubble looking very white on his prune-dark face, and his fingers were nothing but bones.

“Hold still, Quinn,” she said. “Any minute now.”

And then Quinn saw what the old man was doing. He was opening her dress while she stood there and then he peeled it up and over her head. He now walked around her, to her back, looking like a crab. He unhooked her bra and slid it down off her arms.

What else are servants for, Quinn thought, yes, yes, what else when the lover is too drunk to move. Those bone hands are rattling on her, goddamn it. He looked at her body, and his eyes were stinging.

“Listen,” he said. “You.”

She was kicking her shoes off and the old man went after them, again like a crab.

“Listen,” said Quinn. “You going to send him out or what?”

“You look weird, Quinn.”

“I look weird!”

“I’ll send him out, if you want,” and then she laughed. If she comes close now, if she were close now, and he felt his arm jump and his fist get hard.

Then she stood by the couch and her belly looked soft. The old man was gone or the old man was not gone. Quinn remembered shaking his jacket off, and then the touch of her up against him, standing or lying, except that the red of the couch hurt his eyes, and then a blood roar inside him when they came together. The drunkenness was like veils between them but they came together.