Cat's eye полностью

Cordelia is subdued: blood is impressive, even more impressive than vomit. She and Grace are solicitous on the way home, linking their arms through mine, asking me how I feel. This kind of attention from them makes me tremulous. I’m afraid I will cry, great sopping tears of reconciliation. But I’m far too wary for that by now.

The next time Cordelia tells me to stand against the wall I faint again. Now I can do it almost whenever I want to. I hold my breath and hear the rustling noise and see the blackness and then I slip sideways, out of my body, and I’m somewhere else. But I can’t always watch from above, like the first time. Sometimes there’s just black.

I begin to be known as the girl who faints.

“She’s doing it on purpose,” Cordelia says. “Go ahead, let’s see you faint. Come on. Faint.” But now, when she tells me to, I can’t.

I begin to spend time outside my body without falling over. At these times I feel blurred, as if there are two of me, one superimposed on the other, but imperfectly. There’s an edge of transparency, and beside it a rim of solid flesh that’s without feeling, like a scar. I can see what’s happening, I can hear what’s being said to me, but I don’t have to pay any attention. My eyes are open but I’m not there. I’m off to the side.

Seven – Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Chapter 33

I walk west from Simpsons, still looking for something to eat. Finally I buy a slice of take-out pizza and devour it en route, with my fingers, folding it in two and gnawing. When I’m with Ben I eat at regular times because he does, I eat regular things, but when I’m alone I indulge in junk food and scavenging, my old, singular ways. It’s bad for me, but I need to remember what bad for me is like. I could begin to take Ben for granted, with his ties and haircuts and grapefruits for breakfast. It makes me appreciate him more.

Back at the studio I call him, counting the hours backward to the coast. But there’s only my own voice on the message, followed by the beep, the Dominion Observatory Official Time Signal, ushering in the future. Love you, I say, so he can hear it later. Then I remember: by now he’s in Mexico, he won’t be back till I am.

By now it’s dark outside. I could go out for something more like dinner, or try for a movie. Instead I crawl onto the futon, under the duvet, with a cup of coffee and the Toronto phone book, and start looking up names. There are no more Smeaths, they must have moved or died off, or got married. There are more Campbells than you can shake a stick at. I look up Jon, whose name was once my own. No Josef Hrbik, though there are Hrbeks, Hrens, Hrastniks, Hriczus.

There are no more Risleys.

There is no Cordelia.

It’s strange to be lying in Jon’s bed again. I haven’t thought of this as Jon’s bed because I’ve never seen him in it, but of course it is. It’s a lot neater than his beds used to be, and a great deal cleaner. His first bed was a mattress on the floor, with an old sleeping bag on top of it. I didn’t mind this, in fact I liked it; it was like camping out. Usually there would be a tide line of empty cups and glasses and plates with scraps of food surrounding it, which I didn’t like as much. There was an etiquette about such messes, in those days: there was a line you crossed, from ignoring them to cleaning them up. Whether the man would think you were moving in on him, trying to take him over.

We were lying on that bed one time, right at the beginning, before I’d started to pick up the plates, when the bedroom door opened and a woman I’d never seen before appeared in the doorway. She was wearing dirty jeans and a wan pink T-shirt; her face thin and bleached-looking, with huge pupils. It looked as if she was on some sort of drug, which was beginning to be a possibility, then. She stood there saying nothing, one hand behind her back, her face tight and blank, while I pulled the sleeping bag up over me.

“Hey,” said Jon.

She drew her hand out from behind her back then and threw something at us. It was a paper bag full of warm spaghetti, sauce included. It burst when it hit, festooning us. She went out, still without saying anything, and slammed the door.

I was frightened, but Jon started laughing. “What was that?” I said. “How the hell did she get in?”

“Through the door,” said Jon, still laughing. He untangled a piece of spaghetti from my hair and leaned over to kiss me. I knew this woman must have been a girfriend, or an ex-girlfriend, and I was furious with her. It didn’t occur to me that she might have reason. I hadn’t yet encountered the foreign hairpins left in the bathroom like territorial dog pee on snowy hydrants, the lipstick marks placed strategically on pillows. Jon knew how to cover his tracks, and when he didn’t cover them it was for a reason. It didn’t occur to me either that she must have had a key.

“She’s crazy,” I said. “She should be in a bin.”