Paul put his glass on the table and cleared his throat. He had been silent all evening, polite but mysterious, and now everyone glanced in his direction. He was attractive, Claire thought, his thick gray hair falling in waves against his tan face, like the sea against sand. He looked like a hero out of the Ramayana, sitting here on her veranda. She leaned forward to hear what he had to say, wanting not to like him, wanting to think Inez unhappy.
“They used to eat rats,” Paul said evenly, “at the place I was staying in South America.”
“Don’t tell me about it,” Inez insisted. She waved one long hand in the air and shook her head. “Please!”
Paul smiled. His teeth were white and perfectly even. “I will, though,” he said. Claire studied him closely, wondering if it was courage or just ignorance that made him push on this way. People who worked for Inez generally did whatever necessary to keep her happy. “I think you need some shock therapy, Inez. Maybe what we really need to do is trap a rat and let you touch it.”
“We could oblige,” Claire put in, drawing a dark look from Steve, feeling as free and giddy as if she were standing at the edge of a precipice. Inez’s face was now so taut that two small lines had deepened on either side of her mouth. “Our maid bought these traps, like little cages. Once the rats are caught, she smacks them on the head and tosses them out into the street. You’ve seen them everywhere, I’m sure, dead rats slowly becoming part of the road.”
Paul chuckled, Raoul shook his head, amused, and Inez choked slightly on her gin.
“Claire,” Steve said. The anger in his voice was like ground glass, glittering, so seductive and so fine that only she could feel its sharpness. “Darling. See how you are distressing Inez.” He smiled and gestured to the cut-glass dish, nearly empty, on the table. “We’re almost out of cashews here,” he said. “Don’t we have any more?”
He was so polite! Such a wonderful man, Inez must be thinking, and so handsome with that dark beard, those vivid blue eyes. Only Claire heard the thick weave of anger cushioning his every word. She gave him a dazzling smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you go and see?”
The cashews were in the freezer, carefully sealed away from rodents. They both knew it. Steve hesitated, then put down his glass and maneuvered past Inez. When he brushed Claire’s shoulder his animosity reached her like a cold breeze, and anger bloomed darkly in her own heart. Steve was worried, she could tell, that she would mess up his funding, though he should know better. After all these years, of course she would be a proper hostess. For the sake of the funding, she would keep the rest of her rat stories to herself. But she saw with satisfaction that Paul and Raoul had already become engrossed in the topic.
“I’m serious,” Paul said. He put down his drink and leaned back in his chair, running his hands through his thick hair and clasping them behind his head. “If you want to conquer your fear, Inez, you must first face up to it. It worked for me. I was in the Seychelles for a while, doing an engineering project. And I always noticed that the workers had lost a few layers of skin on their fingertips and their toes. I thought no more of it until this happened to me, once or twice, that I had this funny reaction with my skin. At first I thought it was some kind of disease. I even looked up the symptoms of leprosy. One day I became concerned enough to ask a doctor. He was an Indian doctor, a Sikh. He wore a pure white turban on his head. He took one look at my fingertips and laughed. ‘Oh, Mr. Paul,’ he said. ‘I see you are being bothered by our cunning rats. They come in the night, don’t you know, and numb the fingertips with their breath. Then they can nibble at the first few layers of skin undetected.’”
Claire smiled. Inez’s long face had twisted into an expression of near pain. “Thank you very much, Paul,” Inez said. “I shall never sleep again.”
Paul shook his head with some impatience. He held up his fingers, which were long and square tipped. For a moment everyone was quiet, gazing at Paul’s unblemished hands. “My point is not to disgust you, Inez. I’m trying to explain. Just think of how I felt, with those rat marks on my fingertips already. I went out and bought all the rolls of wire I could find, and I rigged up a veritable fortress in my room. My skin healed, but I still didn’t sleep well. I kept thinking of the little rat teeth, white, like the points of knives. I woke up in cold sweats, dreaming of them. Finally, I decided if I could touch a rat, in a controlled situation, that is, then I might be able to move beyond the fear. And so I trapped one, at night, in a cage like Claire described. My God, it was a big one too, and black. But I made myself touch it, and it wasn’t so different than, say, touching a cat. I poisoned it, soon after. It wasn’t pleasant, but the dreams stopped, and since then I haven’t worried at all about rats.”
Inez, listening, had drained her drink. “Well, I admire you, Paul,” she said, putting her sweaty glass down on the table. “But I couldn’t possibly touch a rat. With me it is a genuine phobia. I’m not scared of any other animal. For instance—here’s a real story for you—I was living out in the countryside in Indonesia in this lovely little villa. It was next to a river, perfectly marvelous, with the coconut trees swaying overhead and all sorts of wildlife. Monitor lizards as long as you are tall, Paul, and once I even saw an alligator slide off the banks into the water. I used to like it all well enough, watching it from the balcony on the second story.
“Well, one day I came home from work early. It was one of those steamy hot days you get in the interior, and I was drenched with sweat. Shrugged out of my clothes right away, grabbed my sarong, and padded off for a bath. The tub was on the left side of the room, the sink directly to the right, and I went for the sink first because I wanted to brush my teeth. So imagine this, now. I was standing there at the sink, my mouth all frothy with toothpaste, when in the glass of the mirror I saw something dark move in the tub. A lizard, I thought first, though I knew instinctively that it was not. I froze right there, with the toothbrush in my mouth, and watched in the mirror as a cobra rose up against the white porcelain of the bath.”
Steve had stopped in the doorway with the crystal bowl full of cashews, and Inez paused in her story to smile and wave him to his chair. She was flushed, two bright spots of color on her pale cheeks, and her long fingers moved like narrow shafts of light. Raoul and Paul, who had both drawn forward in their chairs, took advantage of the pause to replenish their drinks. Claire studied Steve as he placed the nuts in the middle of the table. He was smiling, but a muscle twitched in his lean face. So much of life turned out to be a matter of luck, good or bad, Claire thought, reaching for a cashew. This party, for instance, was something they had planned quite carefully for weeks, and yet it had nearly been ruined. Everything had been ready, the marble floors polished, the windows sparkling, the roast in the oven, when the vilest smell in the world had begun to permeate the house. Wordless, she and Steve had met in the kitchen, setting aside their dust rags and their animosity. Steve turned off the gas and yanked the oven away from the wall, and together they had tilted it forward to look into the space behind.
The stench—baked urine, singed hair—had sharpened, and with the stove balanced between them they had heard frantic movement. And then, as if in sudden consensus, the rats had begun to leap from their nest in the stove. One after another, thick black rats followed by their smaller babies. Like Inez, Claire had wanted to scream and run, but because she and Steve were balancing the heavy stove between them, there was nothing to do but wait for the rats to leave. One of them had slid right down her arm. Even now, hours later, Claire could feel the wiry rat claws on the skin. She shivered, shaking off the sensation, then spoke to Inez.
“How vulnerable you must have felt,” she said.
“Oh, I was terrified.” Inez had been gazing pensively into the foliage, but now she looked up and grew animated again. “I just froze. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a cobra, outside of pictures, I mean. Well, they are evil looking. Black and swaying, with that decorated cowl. I held perfectly still for an instant,
and watched it sway and hiss at me in the mirror. There were several yards between us. I had to decide if it was close enough to strike. Finally, I bolted and ran like hell out of the bathroom, screaming bloody murder for the maid and the gardener.”
“Thank the heavens,” Raoul said as Inez paused, “for maids and gardeners.”
Inez shook her head. “So you’d think. But they were more terrified than I was. The gardener gave me a forked stick about four meters long and explained how to use it, but he refused to even go upstairs. So I had a drink and then I went up by myself. The snake was gone, so I sat down on the toilet and waited. Sure enough, after an hour it came back, stuck its head up from the drain and slithered out. I pinned it with the stick and cut off its head with a machete the gardener had given me. The blood—oh, it was awful. But my point is, it didn’t bother me a bit to touch that snake, not once it was dead. But I’m still quite sure that I could never bring myself to touch a rat, even one that was very, very dead.”
“Inez,” Steve said, raising his glass in a toast. “That’s an amazing story. I’d like to make a toast to you. High points for bravery.”
Claire raised her glass along with the others, and even smiled, though she thought that Steve had gone too far, was sliding over the edge into obsequious behavior.
“Yes,” Raoul said, clinking his glass against Steve’s. “Well. Perhaps you ought to acquire a python, Inez, to eat your rats. I saw one devour a cat once, and it was quite effective.”
They all laughed and stood up. The darkness had descended with tropical suddenness. Frangipani blossoms glowed faintly all around them, their heavy scent drifting through the air. Steve, deferential as a footman, took Inez’s elbow, and Claire turned away abruptly, leaving the nuts and dirty glasses to the rats that lurked behind them in the dark leaves.
The original dinner, which had begun to bake with the rats in the oven, had been thrown away, and Claire had rushed to the nearest restaurant for an order of biryani rice and curried chicken. Now the maid served it up in steaming bowls, as if it had been concocted in their own kitchen. The three guests ate heartily. Lovely curry, Raoul murmured, helping himself to more of the golden rice. Extraordinary biryani! Even Inez ate with gusto, as if she were filling up all the long narrow hollows of her limbs. Only Steve and Claire, the scent of baking rats still vividly with them, ate sparingly. Nevertheless, the dinner conversation was polite and lively. At the end of it, after a dessert of fresh mangoes and dark coffee, Inez sat back and answered the unspoken question that had shaped the evening.
“Steve,” she said. “Claire. What a lovely dinner party. And I think we both agree,” she added, nodding toward Raoul, “that you are doing good work here. I feel sure your funding will be extended. It is what I will recommend.”
“That’s splendid,” Steve said, and Claire heard the relief rushing through his voice. “I’m just delighted.”
“It is wonderful,” Claire agreed. Already the worry was easing from Steve’s face, and she thought yes, good, now we will get our lives back once again.
They stayed for a second cup of coffee, and Claire had her earlier suspicions confirmed when Paul excused himself, pleading an early morning, and Inez, her eyes lingering on him as he left, got up a moment later. She smiled languidly as she rose, stretching her long arms. “My wrap,” she murmured. “I have an early morning, too. Did I leave it on the veranda?”
“I’ll look,” Steve said, standing up immediately, and Claire knew he was thinking of the rats. “You wait here.”
“Nonsense,” Inez said. “I’m coming with you. Otherwise, you won’t know where to look. Besides, I want to finalize a detail or two with you.”
Steve shot a look at Claire, who shrugged. Inez had already announced her decision; what harm could rats do now? She watched them walk through the living room, Inez trailing a sweet perfume, her white dress luminous in the darkness.
Raoul put his hand on her arm. “Delightful, Claire,” he said. “And congratulations. The funding decisions were next to impossible this year. You really made an impression here tonight.”
“Despite the rat?” she joked, and Raoul laughed.
“Because of the rats,” he said. “I really think so. Inez loves to tell her cobra story, and she so rarely gets a chance.”
“And who is Paul?” Claire asked, taking a step closer to Raoul and lowering her voice. “Is there something going on?”
“Going on?” Raoul repeated, and Claire saw, to her surprise, that he was flustered.
“Between Paul and Inez,” she said. “I thought I sensed…something.”
“Oh, maybe,” Raoul said, and shrugged. “Who knows, with Inez. Anything could be happening. The woman is a cobra.”
Claire laughed.
“Lovely evening,” Raoul said again, kissing her cheek.
Claire saw him to the door, and on an impulse she went outside, into the garden. There were no streetlights, but the moon had risen high above the city and the frangipani tree glowed, the white blossoms cascading to the ground. Claire hugged her arms, inhaled deeply, feeling the sweet release of a job well done, of success. Later tonight she and Steve would go over the evening, relishing the happy outcome, laughing, finally, at the near catastrophe with the rats. It would be like the old times, days and nights they had spent working in the most remote villages, living in thatched huts and hauling water from communal wells. Hard experiences, in some ways, but they had lain together every night, whispering their dreams and plans, the stars so close in the welling darkness that they might have reached out and plucked some from the sky. Now Claire pulled a frangipani blossom from the tree, fingering its waxen petals. Things had seemed so much simpler when she and Steve were young. They had gone out in the world to make a difference, and for many years had done so, without all these complications.
The rustling came from the veranda and at first she tensed, thinking it was another rat. Then she saw the dull ember of Inez’s cigarette, the glow of her dress, and Steve’s voice lifted through the foliage. Inez laughed, a soft sound, and Claire took a step, meaning to call out. But a movement stopped her. They were two shadows, that was all, Steve dark in his printed shirt, Inez pale in her white dress, and she watched them pull together, intertwine. The kiss lasted for a very long time, it seemed. Claire stood in the garden and watched them as she might watch two strangers, conscious not of anger or jealousy, but rather a letting down, a disappointment so vast that she felt herself paralyzed by its weight. It was only after they drew away from one another, Inez laughing lightly and touching her long fingers to Steve’s face, that Claire roused herself. She hurried back and met them in the foyer. Everything was no more or less than usual, Inez sliding into a white silk jacket, Steve reaching out to shake her hand.
“Divine,” Inez said, brushing her lips against Claire’s cheek. “Delightful, Claire. All my thanks.”
“Well,” Steve said when she was gone. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Sweet success. No thanks to you and your rat stories, I might add.”
“Rats weren’t the only thing I might have mentioned,” Claire said, noticing the slackness in his jaw, the odd asymmetry of his nose, as if he were a person she had never met before.
Steve didn’t answer. He looked at her steadily, then closed his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said.
Claire ran her hands across her arms. Hours had passed, yet she could still feel the tiny rat feet scraping down her skin. “I think you know very well what I mean,” she said.
Steve pulled himself away from the door and walked across the room. Now that the long worrying was over, his face was youthful and relaxed again, almost boyish. Claire found it hard to move, hard, almost, to breathe. She knew she ought to say something about the kiss she had witnessed, but she could not seem to summon the words. What would he say, anyway? That it did not matter? That it did? Either way, what would they do next? There was a time when Claire’s opinion had influenced all Steve’s actions, but n
ow she feared her words would not touch him in the least.
Steve did not seem to notice her distress. “I got the funding,” he said pensively, with a hint of venal joy. “I think that’s what really matters.”
“Is it?” Claire asked, turning back to survey the table, empty now except for a slender vase full of white and purple orchids. Already the maid had finished the dishes and gone home.
“Yes,” Steve said. He was looking at her now, standing in the doorway to the bedroom, one hand on the door frame, the other hanging loosely at his side. In his face she saw such exhaustion and such sadness that she knew the kiss she had witnessed was not the first between them, or the last. “I don’t mean to be cruel, Claire,” he said, “but right now that’s the main thing, yes.”
That night Claire slept fitfully. She did not think directly of the long kiss she had seen, or what it might mean. Instead, she thought about the story she had not told, which remained vividly alive in her mind. She could not forget the feel of the rat feet, or the smell of the rats as they burst from the oven, one after another, abandoning their burning nest. There was the ruined roast, splattered on the floor, covered with rat tracks. There was the oven, turned on its side, the hairs and sticks of the rat nest spilling out the back. Neither she nor Steve had spoken as they scrubbed. The maid was on half salary, and half days. Inez was coming to dinner. Every time Steve swore, Claire had felt it run through her like a blow. Now the day had reached its uneasy conclusion, but the scent of rats, the feel of their wiry feet, lingered still.
Once during that night she started awake in the dark room, thinking she heard the thump of rats in the wall, and later she woke again with a twitching in her extremities, convinced that rats had nibbled at her fingertips and toes. But her flesh was intact, the skin smooth and firm and whole. She curled up, drawing her limbs close together beneath the sheet. Was it really possible, she wondered, to have your flesh eaten while you slept? Steve’s hand was flung out across the pillow. She leaned close to it, breathing lightly on his fingertips at first, then making an experimental nip at his flesh. He didn’t stir. Claire, disturbed by this evidence, tried again. Your guests, she thought. Your agency, the compromises that you made. This was the hand that had pulled Inez close on the veranda.