Chapter 8/ Both Bull and Self Transcended
It had been a wonderful night, that was the tragedy of it. Nirvana should be judged not by the quality of vulgar passions but by the subsequent repose, and they had slept together beautifully on the sofa as if they were part of its design. He awoke with his face at home in the cleft of her shoulder blade, his hair stuck to her skin. He was happy! Daylight swelled behind a closed blind. He squeezed her waist, kissed the back of her neck. This was happiness! But then she stretched, and her hand found its way into a fault-line in the sofa.
'What's this?'
'Hmm? What's what?'
She drew it out with theatrical slowness. In the half-light it seemed to Alex that she was skinning a snake.
'Alex, whose are these?'
Alex opened his mouth.
'Don't say Kitty's,' said Esther firmly, and, with that, their closeness was over, she was ripped from him, suddenly sitting up.
'They're fishnets. Old women don't wear fishnets.'
And that was a fact.
'Es, wait-'
She swore quietly, expressively, and grabbed the remote control. The TV trembled into life, almost cautious to intrude. She put on her underwear. A talking piece of furniture willingly filled the sound-gap, one of its most useful functions. Alex opened his mouth.
'And please,' said Esther, ramming her feet into her shoes, even before her trousers were on, 'don't use the phrase innocent explanation. Or she's just a friend. Don't tell me you'd never do anything to hurt me. Please. Please try not to say anything you've heard on television.'
In the middle of the East a man boarded a bus with a bomb pressed to his navel. In Parliament a man accused another man of deceit. A child was missing. Her parents rocked and gulped ad couldn't finish their sentences. 'Do you think you can play it out?' she asked. She had those tears, waiting. She stood in front of the screen. He didn't know what she meant by these words. He knew, however, what her body meant, naked except for knickers and shoes. Those fierce bulges that were her thigh muscles: she could walk away. She would.
'There will never be that moment, don't you get it?' she asked, punching the arm of the sofa. 'When you've had all the different people you want, when you're done, when you settle for me. People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and you agree to stand in it and believe in it. It's faith, you idiot.'
- The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
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