"What on earth?" says Rennie, to no one in particular. Everyone in the place is peering at the German woman's foot, plump and white and pink-toed, stuffed-looking, which her friend holds up like a trophy.
"She stepped on a sea urchin," says Lora, who's back again. "They always do it, they should watch where they're going. It hurts at first but it's no big deal."
The woman is lying back with her eyes closed; her foot sticks straight out. After a few minutes Elva comes through the doorway that leads to the kitchen; she no longer has the box, she's wearing a red and white checked apron and carrying a lime and a candle. She kneels in front of the outstretched foot, appropriates it, peers at the toes. Then she begins rubbing with the cut lime. The German woman screams.
"Keep still," says Elva. "It nothin'. This will be gone tomorrow."
"Can you not take them out?" says the other woman. She's anxious, she's almost incoherent. This is not according to schedule.
"They break off and poison you," Elva says. "You got matches?"
There's no doubt who's in charge. Someone from the circle produces a box of matches and Elva lights the candle. She tilts it and drops the hot wax over the toes, rubbing it in. "You should of pee on it," she says to the other woman. "When this happen here, the boy pee on the girl's foot or the girl pee on the boy's. That take away the pain."
The German woman opens her eyes and gazes at Elva. Rennie recognizes the look, it's a look you can give only to a foreigner, a look of hope, a desperate clinging to the illusion that it's all a translation problem and you haven't really heard what you know you've just heard.
Several people laugh, but not Elva. She's got the other foot now, the uninjured one, she's digging her thumbs into it. The German woman gasps and looks around for help: she's been invaded, this is the wrong foot. She has the controlled, appalled expression of a visiting duchess who knows she must not openly disparage the local customs, however painful or revolting.
Elva digs harder. She's smug now, she has an audience, she's enjoying herself. "Your veins block," she says. "I unblock your veins, the blood carry the poison away."
"I wouldn't let her near me," says Lora. "She's got thumbs like hammers. She'll total your back as soon as look at you. She says she can cure just about anything but I'd rather be sick, thank you very much."
There's an audible snapping sound; the tendons, Rennie thinks. The German woman's face is twisted, her eyes are screwed up, she's not going to yell or moan, she's determined to preserve her dignity. "You hear the veins cryin' out?" says Elva. "That the gas, movin' in them. You feel lighter?"
"There's no rooms," Lora says to Rennie. "It's full up, it's the election."
"Maybe I should phone the other hotels," says Rennie, who is still watching Elva.
"Phone?" says Lora. "Other hotels?" She laughs a little.
"There aren't any other hotels?" says Rennie.
"There used to be," says Lora, "but they're closed down now. There's one for the locals, but I wouldn't stay there. A girl could get seriously misunderstood. I'll try somewhere else for you."
"It in the hands," says Elva to the onlookers. "It a gift, I have it from my grandmother, she give me that when I small. She pass it to me. You feel this lump?"
The German woman nods. She's still wincing, but not as much.
"Your mama give you a blow when you small," Elva says. "You too small that time, you don't remember. The blood lie down, it make a lump. Now it have to move or the poison grow into a cancer." She digs in both thumbs again. "The pain is your youth, risin' up now."
"The old fake," says Lora. "Give her a tourist and she's happy as a pig in shit. Even if they don't believe her they have to act like they do. There's no doctor around here anyway, so they don't have a whole lot of choice; if you sprain your ankle it's her or nothing."
"I think this is maybe enough," says the other woman, who's been hovering around like a concerned parent.
Elva gives her a look of contempt. "I say when I done," she says. The foot cracks, bends in her hands like rubber.
"Now," Elva says, sitting back on her heels. "Walk on it."
Tentatively the German woman puts both feet on the ground. She stands up.
"The pain gone," says Elva, looking around the circle.
The German woman smiles. "It is remarkable," she says.
Rennie, watching, wants to hold out her own foot, even though there's nothing wrong with it, even though it will hurt. She wants to know what it feels like, she wants to put herself into the care of those magic hands. She wants to be cured, miraculously, of everything, of anything at all.
Paul is standing in the kitchen doorway, looking without hurry; Rennie sees him, but decides not to wave. He comes over anyway.
"Taking it easy?" he says to Rennie. "Lora says you don't have a place to stay. I've got space, if you like."
"On a boat?" Rennie says dubiously. She ought to have said thank you first.
"I have a house too," Paul says, smiling. "Two bedrooms. Two beds."
Rennie's not sure what is being offered, but suspects it's not much. There's some room in this world for face value.
"Well," she says. "If you're sure it's all right."
"Why wouldn't it be?" says Paul.
They walk back through the garden. It's full of trees, flowering, overgrown, limes and lemons and something else, odd reddish-orange husks split open to show a white core and three huge black seeds like the eyes of insects. There are a lot of things here that Rennie has no names for.
At the back of the garden there's a five-foot stone wall. Paul lifts her camera bag and her other bag to the top, hoists himself up, and reaches down for her. She takes hold of his hands; she doesn't know where they're going.
Rennie and Daniel were sitting in Daniel's car, which was an unusual thing for them to be doing. It was night, which was also unusual, and it was raining, which was par for the course. When they were together it always seemed to be raining.
They'd just had dinner, dinner, not lunch. Rennie wondered whether Daniel was about to do something out of character.
Well, how about it? she said to him. A little reckless hand-holding? Want to roll around on the gear shift?
I know I can't offer you much, he said.
He looked so miserable that she felt she ought to express compassion, she ought to comfort him, she ought to tell him everything was fine. Instead she said, You're right. You can't offer me much.
Daniel looked at his watch, then out the window at the rain. There were cars going by but nobody walking on the street. He took hold of Rennie's shoulders and kissed her gently on the mouth. He ran the ends of his fingers over her lips.
I'm very fond of you, he said.
Flamboyant adjectives will be your downfall, said Rennie, who couldn't resist.
I know I don't express myself very well, Daniel said. Rennie wasn't sure she could take that much sincerity all at once. He kissed her again, quite a lot harder. Rennie put her face against his neck and the collar of his shirt. He smelled like laundry. It was safe enough, he could hardly take off her clothes or his in a parked car on a street with two-way traffic.
She wanted him to though, she wanted to lie down beside him and touch him and be touched by him; at the moment she believed in it, the touch of the hand that could transform you, change everything, magic. She wanted to see him lying with his eyes closed, she wanted to see him and not be seen, she wanted to be trusted. She wanted to make love with him, very slowly, she wanted it to last a long time, she wanted the moment just before coming, helplessness, hours of it, she wanted to open him up. There was such a gap between what she wanted and where she was that she could hardly stand it.
She pulled back. Let's go home, she said.
It's not that I don't want to, he said. You know that.
His face for a moment was like a child's looking up, he was so sweet it hurt, and Rennie felt brutal. He had no right to appeal to her like that, to throw himself on her mercy. She wasn't God, she di
dn't have to be understanding, which was a good thing because she was rapidly understanding less and less about this and soon she wouldn't understand anything at all. Rennie liked to know the names for things and there was no name for this.
What do you do afterwards, she said, go home and jerk off? Or maybe you go home and stick your hand into the job jar. Don't tell me you haven't got one, I know you do. What else would you do with your spare time?
He put his hand gently on the back of her neck. What would you like to do? he said. If you really want to, we'll check into a hotel somewhere. I can only stay an hour, that's all I've got, and then what? Would that be love? Is that what you want?
No, said Rennie. As usual she wanted everything, which was in short supply.
I'm not good at that sort of thing, Daniel said. I'd resent you for it and I don't want that. I care about you, I care what happens to you. I guess I think I can do more for you as your doctor; I'm better at it. He looked down at his hands, which were on the steering wheel now.
Why not both? said Rennie.
That's the way I am, said Daniel. There are some things I just can't do.
It struck Rennie that Daniel was a lot like Griswold, not as it was but as it would like to be. Ordinary human decency, a fine decent man they would say, with a list of things you just couldn't do. This insight did not fill her with joy. He was normal, that was what she'd fallen in love with, the absolutely ordinary raised to the degree of X. What you were supposed to be. He did make his living cutting parts off other people's bodies and patting their shoulders while they died, he used the same hands for both, but nobody considered that unusual. He was a good man, a mystery, Rennie wanted to know why. Maybe it was habit.
What do you believe in? she said to him. I mean, what keeps you ticking over? What makes you get up in the mornings? How do you know what kinds of things you can do and what kinds you can't do? Don't tell me it's God. Or maybe you've got those things in the job jar, along with the jobs. Saying this, she felt like a troll, but Daniel took it straight.
I don't know, said Daniel. I've never thought that much about it.
Rennie felt cold, she felt she was dying and Daniel knew it, he just hadn't told her about it yet. But making love for an hour in a hotel room with Daniel would not work, she could see that now. They would go in and close the door and take off their damp coats and he would sit down on the edge of the bed. Seeing him with his head bent, dutifully undoing his shoelaces: this would be too much for her, it would be too sad. You don't have to, she would say. She would hold onto his hands and cry and cry.
She no longer expected Daniel to save her life. She no longer expected Daniel. Maybe that was the right way to do it, never to expect anything.
Let's go home, she said.
Rennie lay on the bed, their bed, stiff as plaster, waiting for Jake to come out of the shower. They'd talked about it enough. The truth was that she didn't want him to touch her and she didn't know why, and he didn't really want to touch her either but he wouldn't admit it.
You have to try, he said. You won't let me try.
You sound like the little engine that could, she said. I think I can, I know I can.
You really are relentless, he said.
So they were going to try. She'd stood in front of her open closet, wondering what you should wear to try, to a trial. A trial of strength. She wanted to wear something and knew she had to; these days she always wore something to bed. She didn't want to be seen, the way she was, damaged, amputated.
Once he'd given her a purple one-piece number that snapped together at the crotch and they'd got very high on some top-grade Colombian, and at the crucial moment neither of them could get the snaps undone. They'd hugged each other, rolling around and laughing so much they almost fell off the bed. So much for sexy underwear, she'd said.
She decided on black, two pieces, he'd given that to her a while ago. He could leave the top part on if he wanted to. She lit some candles and lay down on the bed, raising one knee, arranging herself. It was no good.
She tried to think about Daniel, lying here beside her instead, hoping that would make her feel better, softer, but she couldn't. She could hardly imagine him without clothes. All she could imagine were his hands, hands with thin fingers and with the marks of a slow dark burning on their backs. In the Middle Ages they'd painted pictures of souls, the souls of the dying leaving their bodies, and for a long time they'd argued about what part of the body the soul inhabited when you were alive. There was no doubt about Daniel at all: his soul was in his hands. Cut them off and he'd be a zombie.
One man I'm not allowed to touch, she thought, and another I won't allow to touch me. I could write a piece on it: "Creative Celibacy." "Sexual Abstinence, the Coming Thing." Except it's been done. What's supposed to come next? Sublimation? Ceramics? Devotion to a good cause?
Jocasta would have advised her to try masturbation. That too was once supposed to be the wave of the future. Listen, when all else fails let your fingers do the walking. But masturbation didn't interest her, it would be like talking to yourself or keeping a journal. She'd never been able to understand women who kept journals. She already knew what she would be likely to say. Unlikely things could only be said by other people.
Jake came in from the shower with a blue towel tucked around his waist. He sat down on the bed beside her and kissed her gently on the mouth.
I'd like the candles out, she said.
No, he said, leave them on. I want to see you.
Why? she said.
You turn me on, he said.
She didn't answer. He ran his hand up her right leg, across her belly, down the left thigh, over the bent knee. He did that again, moving the black cloth down. He didn't go above the waist. Upsidedown high school, Rennie thought. He moved his hand between her legs, bent to kiss her navel.
Maybe we should smoke some dope, he said.
To help me relax? she said, watching him from her head, which was up there on the pillow at the other end of her body. She felt her eyes sparkling like those of some small malicious animal, a weasel or a rat. Red, intelligent, in a sharp little face with tiny incisors. Cornered and mean.
That's right, he said. He brought the tea canister in and opened it and rolled a joint and lit it and passed it to her. I love you, he said, but you can't believe it.
What's the difference between a belief and a delusion? she said. Maybe you just think you ought to. Maybe I make you feel guilty. You've always told me guilt was a big thing with Jewish mothers.
You aren't my mother, he said. A good thing, too.
How could I be? she said. I'm not Jewish.
Nobody's perfect, he said. You're my golden shiksa. We all have to have at least one, it's obligatory.
So that's what I am, said Rennie. I guess that's it for my identity crisis. It's nice to know who you are. But I'm hardly golden.
Gilt-edged security, anyway, said Jake.
Is that a pun? said Rennie.
Don't ask me, said Jake, I'm a functional illiterate and proud of it.
But up and coming, said Rennie.
As often as possible, said Jake. You think we could set this to music?
This isn't a forties movie, said Rennie.
You could have fooled me, said Jake.
Rennie felt she was going to cry. What she couldn't bear was the effort he was making to pretend nothing was different, the effort she was making to help him pretend. She wanted to say, I'm dying, but that would be melodrama, and anyway she probably wasn't.
Jake began rubbing her left thigh, slowly up and then down. I feel awkward, he said. I feel you don't want me to be doing this.
She was watching him but she didn't know how to help him. I can't believe, she thought. Why not? The words in her head came one at a time, as if they were being spoken by someone else. She watched them form, rise, burst. It was strong grass.
You don't have to be perfect, he said.
He bent down and kissed her again, supporting h
imself with his arms so his torso didn't touch her. He's doing this for me, she thought. It's not for him, he doesn't want to.
He lifted her and slid the black satin shorts down and put his mouth on her.
I don't want that, she said. I don't need charity. I want you inside me.
Jake paused. He raised her arms, holding her wrists above her head. Fight me for it, he said. Tell me you want it. This was his ritual, one of them, it had once been hers too and now she could no longer perform it. She didn't move and he let go of her. He put his face down on her shoulder; his body went limp. Shit, he said. He needed to believe she was still closed, she could still fight, play, stand up to him, he could not bear to see her vulnerable like this.
Rennie knew what it was. He was afraid of her, she had the kiss of death on her, you could see the marks. Mortality infested her, she was a carrier, it was catching. She lay there with his face against her neck, thinking of something she'd seen written in a men's washroom once when she was doing a piece on graffiti. Life is just another sexually transmitted social disease. She didn't blame him. Why should he be stuck with it? With her.
After a while he raised his head. I'm sorry, he said.
So am I, said Rennie. She waited. You're having a thing with someone else, aren't you?
It's not important, said Jake.
Is that what you say about me? Rennie said. To her?
Look, said Jake, it's either that or a warm wet washcloth. You won't let me touch you.
Touch, said Rennie. Is that all? Does it matter that much? Isn't there any more to it than that?
She stroked the back of his neck and thought of the soul leaving the body in the form of words, on little scrolls like the ones in medieval paintings.
Oh please.
They walk inland, uphill. Rennie tries to think of something neutral to say. He's carrying her camera bag and the other bag. It's the minimum, but she shouldn't have brought so much.
It's about five-thirty and although the asphalt road is hot it's not too hot, the trees cast shadows. There are little houses set back from the road, people are sitting out on their porches, the women wear print dresses, some of the older ones have hats on, and Paul nods to them, they nod back, they don't stare but they look, taking note. A group of girls passes, going down the hill, fifteen-or sixteen-year-olds in white dresses, some with bows or flowers in their hair, which is braided and pinned up; they look oddly old-fashioned, costumed. They're singing, three-part harmony, a hymn. Rennie wonders if they're going to church.