Lionel Shriver - Checker and the Derailleurs

When she returned she switched on a light, to Rahim’s disappointment—it ruined the satanic religiosity of the scene. As she rinsed out Checker’s cut in warm water over her sink, they both stared at the glassblower, not quite as mysterious without the glow of the furnace, but no less intimidating.

Everything about her was long: her neck, her waist, her face. Her cheeks were hollow and drawn; her expressions were conducted in the narrow range between amusement and irritation. As she tended his hand, her face sharpened in an intentness that seemed usual. Her oversized green shirt billowed under her apron with accidental style. Her jeans shone with dirt. The musty smell wafting from them suggested she’d been in these clothes for a while.

“You’re filthy,” Check observed joyously as his blood ran in diluted swirls down the drain.

“You’re stupid,” she shot back. “Why were you and your friend crawling around in a pile of broken glass at four in the morning?”

“Watching you,” said Check. As she went for the antiseptic, he followed her hands. They looked older than the rest of her—fiftyish, sixtyish even—scarred and craggy, with abused nails. Her fingers were long like Caldwell’s, but ancient and knuckly. They tended his cut with care but authority, like a good mechanic’s.

“What are all these little scars?” she asked about his own hand, which was covered in small white lumps.

“From drumming.”

A look. “Violent.”

“Passionate.”

She laughed.

“Why is that funny?”

“Well, how old are you?”

“What does that have to do with passion?”

“Maybe nothing,” she admitted.

Her motions were jagged, like her hair. When she turned to find the gauze, a peak of hair touched his face; Checker reached up as if to brush it away, but really to feel it—a little coarse; he noticed a few strands of gray.

“How old are you?”

“Why?”

“Cause I can usually tell. You, I can’t place within ten years.”

“Twenty-nine.”

“I’d have guessed older.”

“Real diplomatic.”

“You’re not insulted.”

She stopped wrapping his hand and looked at Check as if seeing him for the first time. She seemed surprised by what she saw. “No?”

“It doesn’t matter to you, looking young,” Check explained. “Just now—I think you were flattered.”

The woman sucked in her cheeks and shot him a sour, bemused little smile. “Maybe.”

“You must finish wrap.”

This whole time Rahim had been following the medical process suspiciously, examining the label on the antiseptic; when she stopped working on the bandage Rahim couldn’t contain himself.

“ What? ”

“Wrap,” said Rahim staunchly.

“You spy on my work and knock over a whole barrel of cullet and I still take you in to patch up your bloody bungling and I don’t do it fast enough. So sorry.”

“’Sokay,” said Rahim, who had no sense of American sarcasm. “Just finish quickly, please. Sheckair vedy tired. I take him home now.”

“Well, I’m a little tired myself,” she said with genuine annoyance. Disappointed, Checker watched her tie up his hand summarily and stand, hands on her hips. She was taller than both of them.

“Come.” Rahim took Checker’s good hand and began to pull him toward the door. The Iraqi had his proprietary side, like a severe, overly protective secretary.

Check dragged. “Can I come back?”

“What for?”

“The glass. I want to watch.”

“You’ve been watching.”

“Tomorrow!” At last Rahim succeeded in hauling Checker out the door, but not before he’d gotten one last glimpse of the glassblower, who was looking at him, he thought, terrifically hard. She had the same drastic features as Caldwell Sweets, and she certainly did look older than twenty-nine, but Checker, who had a lot of experience with looking at people right, knew full well that she was gorgeous.

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