Pages for You (24 page)

“What—” Anne stopped, slightly breathless. Flannery had been walking so fast she was almost jogging. “What, we shake hands here, and then—what?”

“Just let me get back to my car and leave. You can check out a few more of those circles and arrows, up there.” She pointed toward a high rock formation they had not yet reached. “There’s nothing worse than people saying goodbye and then driving away in separate cars. I know, it’s a western thing. There’s nothing good about it.”

Where did all this will come from, all of a sudden? How did the one who had never done any of this before know how to find the form for finishing? What Anne said was true, of course. This was not literally a last moment, or final frame. The mess of extrication was still to come. Ahead of them lay all those awkward sentences and hesitant requests, the broken dialogue that would unfold over the following weeks.
Do you still have my blue shirt?
And
I’m missing my copy
of Reflections
and need it for something I’m working on . . .
Worst of all:
Perhaps you had better give me back my keys.

Before Anne had the chance to say that one, Flannery would send them back to her, tucked inside a copy of the unread Walter Benjamin. Addressed to Anne Arden, care of the Department of Comparative Literature. Via campus mail.

“S
o.” Anne stood, wrong-footed. “What’s your idea? We stand in the dust here and shake hands?”

But Flannery was altogether over Anne’s wryness by now. She stood very tall on the rocky path. Straight, suddenly. Flannery had a grace in her height, if she could discover it. Maybe she was on her way, now, to discovering it.

In any case, she was no longer reading Anne for clues. Flannery was looking east across the Rio Grande and the flat expanse of Albuquerque to the grand Sandias. The fading sunlight sharpened their edges, rendering them severely magnificent.

“And so. Now—?” But Anne was arrested by the odd expression on Flannery’s face.

“I saved your life,” Flannery said, watching the mountainous light. “Remember telling me that?”

Anne almost smiled. “At that party? Sure I do.” To Flannery’s seriousness she said softly—as if not to wake a sleepwalker—“It was a joke. Remember?”

“You were falling, and I caught hold of you.”

“Right,” Anne said slowly. “But I wasn’t in any real danger. I wasn’t going to fall.”

The light yawned between them, and time stretched itself elsewhere.

“All right,” Anne said at last. To bring Flannery back, maybe, more than anything. Flannery did return briefly from the dusky solitude she had taken refuge in, back to those jade-worried eyes. She loved them still. Their Everglade green would color her vision for years. But Flannery was gone now, too. For her own self-protection, she had to make herself leave.
All right
, what? What had been the question?

“Thank you, Flannery,” Anne said, her low voice a knife edge between sincerity and sarcasm, “for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” Flannery replied, choosing to hear sincerity. Then she kissed Anne on those sweet lips and walked back down the steep, uneven path.

W
ise and foolish. Whose bright idea was that paradox? It seemed unnecessarily taunting as a term for a person’s second year into this educational adventure. If Anne and Flannery had still been together, they might have shared a knowing joke about the
sophomore slump.
Anne had occasionally made remarks, and not complimentary ones, about Flannery’s posture. She had not realized Flannery’s stoop was a self-effacement, an attempt to disguise her height.

Flannery was disguising it less now. She was inclined to keep her head up more of the time, to look at the sky and the light on her walk to campus from the chic, book-filled apartment she now shared with Susan Kim. (The chicness was all Susan’s, but some of it wore off on Flannery.) Some mornings Flannery stopped off for breakfast at one of the half-dozen diners, Greek or American, that offered up their eggs and hash browns. One morning on a whim she bought a pack of Marlboros in a convenience store and then ate a cigarette-punctuated meal, just as she used to. The ash-flavored nostalgia soon struck her, however, as juvenile, if not foolish, and she thought it would be smarter, and wiser, not to try that stunt again. (Besides: she never had been convincing as a smoker.) Eighteen was too young, she told herself, to spend time looking back. She would have to get to the point—as she did—when reading a thick book of theory over black coffee was her own act and not an imitation of Anne.

Over weeks Flannery came up with a long, looping route into campus that took her along one of the town’s broad, tree-lined avenues, where she could watch the season’s progressions toward its forthcoming splendor. The air began to bite and the temperature to drop, and Flannery felt her blood quicken with autumnal anticipation. October was always going to be the month for Flannery. Her new classes filled her with the promise of adventure; and her heart could hardly wait for the passionate hot fall of all those reds, yellows, and golds.

In that season, always, the words and the colors would go straight to her head.

Sylvia Brownrigg is a novelist and reviewer. She was born in California where she spent much of her childhood before moving to Oxford with her family. She graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy. She now lives in London and reviews regularly for the
Times Literary Supplement
and the
Guardian.
She is the author of two previous critically acclaimed works, a short-story collection
Ten Women Who Shook the World
and a novel,
The Metaphysical Touch.

‘An exuberant feat of storytelling that you simply can’t help falling for’ Leo Walstow,
Glamour

‘A thrillingly intimate book, and just the right read for the feeling-frisky season. Swoonsomely romantic’ Eithne Farry,
Elle Magazine

‘A hauntingly beautiful love develops . . . in this tale either for young readers first discovering who they are and how they love, or for those remembering a rose-coloured past’ Booklist, Amazon.com

‘She is obviously one of the most exciting new writers of her generation’ James Wood

‘Language is the real object of infatuation here. An atmosphere gradually forms in which words are as seductive as bodies . . .’
Independent on Sunday

Also by Sylvia Brownrigg

First published 2001 by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York

This edition published 2002 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2011 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-447-20681-1 EPUB

Copyright © Sylvia Brownrigg 2001

The right of Sylvia Brownrigg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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