she
wasn't alone Max found himself feeling annoyed with her for putting
herself at risk in such a way. Asking for it, asking to be raped and
murdered, her body left naked and unmourned near a skip somewhere.
He couldn't concentrate. The music was too loud, the girls too brassy.
He went home.
Over the next few weeks, Max discovered that you can pass a person
for years and not see them, but once you notice them, they're everywhere.
He also found that every time he saw her, she caught at him on some
subliminal level. The situation might change, but the radiance shone
undimmed from her countenance even when she wasn't smiling. Her first
tentative smile for him wasn't the kind of smile Max was used to,
the come-to-bed boldness he'd come to expect as his due. She smiled
at him in a vaguely puzzled way, almost as if looking over her shoulder
to see who he was really looking at. He found himself dreaming about
her at the most inconvenient times - at work, at home, at the match;
once even as he was about to bed another girl. He couldn't help himself.
He was caught. Friday night, he finally gave up. The nightclub was
noisy, and there was no point any more: his chat-up line had lost
its edge. |
He wandered out into the night to where she was handing out soup,
dealing with the no-hopers gently but firmly, occasionally smiling,
but always wearing that expression that had come to haunt him.
The only time she showed any fear was when a couple of youths started
to hassle them. Her companion, an older man, quietly started to
pack up the things to get out of the way: but he wasn't quick enough.
One of them had her pinned against the wall. Once, Max might have
laughed; but tonight he leaped into action.
‘Hey! Piss off and leave her alone!’
She looked at him, surprised but grateful, as they slunk away muttering
threats.
It was three weeks before she took his offer of a date seriously,
and even then it was only a movie and coffee afterwards. As he sat
facing her over a cappuccino, he noted that up close, she was a
bit older than he had thought at first. That expression held something
of the purity of unsullied youth in it, and it was only now that
he could see the lines at the corners of her eyes, and something
about her neck that gave away the passing of time. She was thirty-one:
three years his senior. It didn't matter. She was fascinating. For
the first time since he was |
