The Pillow Friend (23 page)

She felt embarrassed as soon as she had written it. Adolescent stuff, making magic, trying to anticipate and by anticipation control what would happen—let it be. She pressed the delete key and watched her words unbecome, swallowed by darkness. Then she turned her mind to what she was supposed to be writing: a piece on alternative medicines. Except that it wasn't, really; her brief was to praise physicians and to convince anyone who might be considering consulting a homeopath,
curandera
or other unlicensed practitioner to forget the idea. Lots of quotes from doctors and a few carefully worded descriptions of the loopier claims made by proponents of various methods. She had all the details, she knew what was wanted, she just couldn't bring herself to write it. Doctors traded on the faith of their clients just as much as the faith healers did. She thought that homeopathy sounded like a ridiculous pseudoscience, but if it worked for some people, then it worked. There was no sense in doubting that, or in chipping away at people's belief systems. You had to believe in something in order to get well, and if it worked, did it really matter whether it was pills you believed in, or God, or massive doses of vitamins, or the laying-on of hands? It mattered to doctors, of course, fearful of losing paying customers, but she was tired of being an apologist for doctors. This was one of those times when she was sick of her job. Often she enjoyed writing to order, thought of it as something like a crossword puzzle, satisfying but unimportant, but sometimes the spirit rebelled. She decided to take an early lunch break. Maybe if she rethought the piece she could come up with a way of writing something she wouldn't feel ashamed of which would still satisfy the people who funded the journal . . . or maybe she could just put it aside for a couple of months. In a couple of months she might be gone; she could have a different job in a different city, and this would be a problem for someone else.

On her way to lunch she stopped off in Scarborough's and bought herself a new perfume. She didn't wear makeup and felt embarrassed by overtly sexy clothes; scent was the only feminine magic she allowed herself. This one was called “Paris.” There wasn't one called “London” or she would have bought that.

Graham wore the white, open-necked shirt she had imagined, but his aged corduroys were an unpleasant mustard color, a color she couldn't imagine anyone buying from choice. She wondered if he was completely indifferent, or color-blind, or if he had some superstitious investment in the suit, perhaps bought for him by someone else.

His shoulders were hunched when he came onstage and he looked around shiftily. Then he saw her. His posture immediately changed for the better, and as he caught her eye he winked.

She spent the next forty minutes in a haze of blissful, sexually charged hero-worship. Sometimes she closed her eyes, just letting his voice play on her nerves. In accent and cadence it reminded her of John Lennon. It was the voice of the Beatles, magic from her childhood, almost as familiar and loved as her father's voice had been, and just as long lost.

When she allowed the content of his words to register, that, too, moved her, because it was already, most of it, the well-known poetry she loved.

After the reading she felt shy, deeply moved by him, and she hung back, afraid to approach until, as the autograph seekers began to melt away, he beckoned her to him, and said to the small group of people who remained, “This is my friend Agnes Grey.”

Lynne, the only other person she knew, did not look at her. She recognized another member of faculty, Dr. Jones, who smirked and said, “Ah, Miss Grey, the famous Miss Grey. You're a governess, I believe?”

“No, I'm a writer.”

“I was thinking of your namesake.”

His assumption of her ignorance irritated her. “I know that. She was a writer, too.”

“A writer? Well, of her own tale. But chiefly a governess, I think.”

“Jane Eyre was a governess. Agnes Grey only worked as one for a little while. She did other things to earn money, like writing for the penny dreadfuls, and of course she had all sorts of adventures.”

He frowned over his smile. “I don't remember any of that. I always thought it was a dreary little book, myself.”

“Dreary! It was my favorite book! I can still remember some of the scenes, especially the scary ones. And what about that feast scene, you must remember that, I'm sure it was an influence on Christina Rossetti when she wrote ‘Goblin Market.' And of course it was a huge influence on Daphne Du Maurier. And I think even
Dracula
must have been partly inspired by the Prince, all the mystery about his background, and the suggestion that he might be a shape-changer.”

“Prince? Are we talking about the same book?”

“The novel by Anne Brontë,” she said impatiently. They had been walking as they talked, leaving the auditorium in a group. She looked around for Graham and saw him in conversation with a woman she didn't know.

“You've read it recently?”

“No. I read it a long time ago. But I read it probably five or six times when I was a kid. I've tried to find it—I don't know what happened to my copy—and do you know, it's not even in print?”

“It's not really a major work. But of course someone should reprint it.”

“Grey!”

Hearing Lynne call her name she looked around. Then Graham's hand settled, marvelous rescue, on her shoulder. “Did you bring your car? Do you know how to find this restaurant? It's another Mexican one. Do Texans never eat anything else?”

“Of course, to all your questions. Let me just see what Lynne wants—”

“Me, I think.” Leaving one hand on her shoulder he waved at Lynne with the other and called out, “Meet you there! I have my trusty native guide, no worries!”

“Gray for Graham, of course. I thought she was calling me.” She smiled. “Could get confusing, both of us with the same name.”

“Surely no one calls you by your surname.” He sounded faintly disapproving.

“Well, yes, most of my friends do. I hate my name.”

“Agnes is a lovely name.”

“I don't think so. Although reading
Agnes Grey
did do something to reconcile me to it. I like the way it's pronounced in French, but try getting people around here to say ‘Awn-yes'—affected?
Moi?
”

“In Scotland girls christened Agnes are usually called Nancy.”

“Better than Nessie or Aggie. Ness is like mess, and Ag is like gag—oh, dear! You're not Scottish, are you?”

“By affinity only. My parents bought a second home in Argyllshire, before I was born. Have I told you about the bothy? It's in the middle of the most beautiful nowhere on earth, like going back to a better time. I've been going up there for holidays since I was tiny. After my mother died my father wanted to sell it, so my brothers and I bought it off him. If I could have afforded to, I would have bought it all myself. I don't like sharing it, and I'm the one who goes up there and cares for it the most. Someday, when I've had enough of the world and all its vain illusions, I'll become a hermit and retire there.”

She thought of Aunt Marjorie's house in the piney woods of East Texas and felt an urge to tell him about it. But it was not the equivalent of his bothy, not really, and she'd only been there once. Before she could think of how to bring it up, or what she wanted to say, they'd reached her car and he'd changed the subject.

During dinner, separated by so many other people, they hardly spoke to each other, but she was happy just to watch him and sometimes hear his voice. After dinner he claimed tiredness when Lynne suggested continuing the evening at her house, but once he was alone with Agnes in her car he asked if they could go somewhere quiet to talk. “You seemed so far away at dinner. I've been missing you.”

Her heartbeat sped up. She wished she could take him home, but Melinda was having her monthly poker night, and there would be no quiet or privacy for them there. So she took him to yet another Mexican restaurant, this one a
cantina
with a verandah built over a small creek where they could sit in candlelit semidark drinking iced coffee and talking.

“God, it's wonderful to be in a climate where you can sit outdoors at night!” He leaned toward her, his nostrils flaring slightly. “I like your scent. What's it called?”

“Paris.” Feeling bold, she said, “I bought it today. If there'd been one called London I'd've bought that instead.”

He laughed loudly. “London! What a name for a perfume. Who'd want to smell like London? Come to that, who'd want to smell like Paris? The fumes from a million cars, with a subtle hint of the pissoir, coffee, bread, and old
Gitanes
.” He laughed again.

“I've never been to Paris. Or London. They're just ideas to me.”

“Oh, you must, you must see Paris. Come visit me in London and I'll take you to Paris.”

Her heart gave a leap and she almost stopped breathing. “Do you mean it?”

He looked startled and went very still. With a lurch of embarrassment she knew she should have accepted his offer as lightly as it had been made, not taken it seriously.

But his face relaxed, and he said, “Of course. It'll have to be in the school holidays, but not in August, when everyone in France takes a holiday, and unless I win the Pools you'd have to pay your own way, I'm afraid. . . .”

“Of course. I'm used to that. Do you want another coffee? Something else?”

The moment passed, the conversation moved on. She loved the way he talked to her, the interest he showed in whatever she had to say; most of the men she knew would have been dominating the conversation in some way, trying to impress her. It seemed to be part of the mating ritual, or maybe it was just the way men were. This approach, which she found far more seductive, seemed a more feminine style.

She also liked the ease with which he switched levels and topics, from emotional to intellectual, from witty to intimate. He quoted easily and often, without drawing attention to it. She noticed, because he seemed to have read the same books and memorized the same poems as she had herself. All her boyfriends read—it was an obvious connection, something they could always talk about—but no one she could remember talking to, male or female, had matched her so well.

She could happily have gone on talking to him all night, watching his face, listening to his voice, memorizing him, but when he yawned again she realized with a guilty start that they were the last customers left in the place.

“I'm sorry, you must be exhausted. Shall we get out before they throw us out?”

They were both silent, talked-out, as she drove through the streets of downtown, nighttime Austin. The radio was playing softly, songs from twenty or thirty years before. With a pang she heard “Johnny Angel,” a song from her childhood about a girl waiting for that one, unattainable, perfect lover. Why not? There were pleasures to be found in unrequited love. She would never forget this evening, these past two evenings. She thought of Rilke extolling those who love without reward, and she thought, for perhaps the first time without a pang of longing, of Alex Hill.

“What are you thinking?”

Into her mind, as he asked, came the memory of herself at thirteen looking at a photograph of Graham Storey. “Of unrequited love. Of being thirteen and falling in love with someone I didn't know, someone I thought I'd never meet . . .”

“Who was it?”

She had thought she would tell him, but now she couldn't. She wanted him to know without being told. “A picture from a newspaper. A fantasy.”

“How old were you when you first fell in love?”

“You mean . . . really? Really in love?”

He gave a short laugh. “What does that mean? Really? I mean in love, whatever that meant to you.”

“I guess I was seventeen. Or just about to turn seventeen. He was a boy at school. I didn't know him at all, but I heard him recite some poetry and . . . got the wrong idea about him.”

“As old as that? No one before?”

“Not really. Fantasies, like I told you. I guess I was a late developer. Why, how old were you the first time you fell in love?”

“Six. Six and three-quarters, actually.”

“Oh, come on—”

“I'm serious. Other people might laugh, but I can still remember how it felt. I had the same emotions when I was six as I do now—don't you?”

“I don't know. I've never been sure about love.”

“I was sure, absolutely. Susan Bishop. God, I can still remember things about her which I'm sure would embarrass her to hear.”

He had mentioned other girlfriends during the course of the two evenings they had spent together, even a current girlfriend, Caroline, about whom he did not sound at all serious, and she had not felt a twinge of jealousy, until now, as her stomach twisted sickeningly. The grown women, his actual lovers, had not bothered her, but this little girl whose ghost made his voice go suddenly wistful, made her want to cry.

She pulled over to the curb.

“Why are we stopping?”

She switched off the ignition. “Your hotel is just around the corner and down a block. I won't be able to park in front.”

“It doesn't seem to take very long to get anywhere in Austin. I still had things to say.”

“Go ahead and say them, I'm not going to throw you out.”

He looked at her and smiled and reached over to touch her cheek. “Why on earth do you put up with me?”