Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

She went to work on him, and at first it was pleasurable, but as she moved over him it became a succession of waves that had specific colorations, even when he turned her and thought he was taking charge. Soon he felt some substance, some glossy blue possession entangled in the air above him.

“I bet you’re going to say that you’re imagining all this,” she said, her hand skidding across him.

“Who are you?” he said. “Who in the world are you?”

“I warned you,” she whispered, her mouth directly over his ear. “I warned you. You people with your things, your rusty things, you suffer so bad when you come into where we live. Did they tell you we were all soulless here? Did they say that?”

He put his hands on her. “This is not love, but it—”

“Of course not,” she said. “It’s something else. Do you know the word? Do you know the word for something that opens your soul at once? Like that?” She snapped her fingers on the pillow. Her tongue was touching his ear. “Do you?” The words were almost inaudible.

“No.”

“Addiction.” She waited. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

In the middle of the night he rose up and went to the window. He felt like a stump, amputated from the physical body of the woman. At the window he looked down, to the right of the billboard, and saw another apartment building with heavy decorations with human forms near the roof’s edge, and on the third floor he saw a man at the window, as naked as he himself was but almost completely in shadow, gazing out at the street. There were so far away from each other that being unclothed didn’t matter. It was vague and small and impersonal.

“Do you always stand at the window without clothes on?” she asked, from the bed.

“Not in Sweden,” he said. He turned around. “This is odd,” he said. “At night no one walks out on the streets. But there, over on that block, there’s a man like me, at the window, and he is looking out, too. Do people stand everywhere at the windows here?”

“Come to bed.”

“When I was in the army, the Swedish army,” he said, still looking out, “they taught us to think that we could decide to do anything. They talked about the will. Your word ‘willpower.’ All Sweden believes this — choice, will, willpower. Maybe not so much now. I wonder if they talk about it here.”

“You’re funny,” she said. She had moved up from behind him and embraced him.

In the morning he watched her as she dressed. His eyes hurt from sleeplessness. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m already late.” She was putting on a light blue skirt. As she did, she smiled. “You’re a lovely lover,” she said. “I like your body very much.”

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“We? There is no ‘we,’ Anders. There’s you and then there’s me. We’re not a couple. I’m going to work. You’re going back to your country soon. What are you planning to do?”

“May I stay here?”

“For an hour,” she said, “and then you should go back to your hotel. I don’t think you should stay. You don’t live here.”

“May I take you to dinner tonight?” he asked, trying not to watch her as he watched her. “What can we do tonight?”

“There’s that ‘we’ again. Well, maybe. You can teach me a few words of Swedish. Why don’t you hang around at your hotel and maybe I’ll come by around six and get you, but don’t call me if I don’t come by, because if I don’t, I don’t.”

“I can’t call you,” he said. “I don’t know your last name.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Well, listen. I’ll probably come at six.” She looked at him lying in the bed. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

“What?”

“You think you’re in love, don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “Not exactly.” He waited. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“I get the point,” she said. “Well, you’d better get used to it. Welcome to our town. We’re not always good at love but we are good at that.” She bent to kiss him and then was gone. Happiness and agony simultaneously reached down and pressed against his chest. They, too, were like colors, but when you mixed the two together, you got something greenish-pink, excruciating.

He stood up, put on his trousers, and began looking into her dresser drawers. He expected to find trinkets and whatnot, but all she had were folded clothes, and, in the corner of the top drawer, a small turquoise heart for a charm bracelet. He put it into his pocket.

In the bathroom, he examined the labels on her medicines and facial creams before washing his face. He wanted evidence but didn’t know for what. He looked, to himself, like a slightly different version of what he had once been. In the mirror his face had a puffy look and a passive expression, as if he had been assaulted during the night.

After he had dressed and entered the living room, he saw Lauren’s grandmother sitting at a small dining-room table. She was eating a piece of toast and looking out of the window toward the river. The apartment, in daylight, had an aggressively scrubbed and mopped look. On the kitchen counter a small black-and-white television was blaring, but the old woman wasn’t watching it. Her black hair was streaked with gray, and she wore a ragged pink bathrobe decorated with pictures of orchids. She was very frail. Her skin was as dark as her granddaughter’s. Looking at her, Anders was once again unable to guess what race she was. She might be Arabic, or a Native American, or Hispanic, or black. Because he couldn’t tell, he didn’t care.

Without even looking at him, she motioned at him to sit down.

“Want anything?” she asked. She had a high, distant voice, as if it had come into the room over wires. “There are bananas over there.” She made no gesture. “And grapefruit, I think, in the refrigerator.”

“That’s all right.” He sat down on the other side of the table and folded his hands together, studying his fingers. The sound of traffic came up from the street outside.

“You’re from somewhere,” she said. “Scandinavia?”

“Yes,” he said. “How can you tell?” Talking had become a terrible effort.

“Vowels,” she said. “You sound like one of those Finns up north of here. When will you go back? To your country?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps a few days. Perhaps not. My name is Anders.” He held out his hand.

“Nice to meet you.” She touched but did not shake his hand. “Why don’t you know when you’re going back?” She turned to look at him at last. It was a face on which curiosity still registered. She observed him as if he were an example of a certain kind of human being in whom she still had an interest.

“I don’t know … I am not sure. Last night, I …”

“You don’t finish your sentences,” the old woman said.

“I am trying to. I don’t want to leave your granddaughter,” he said. “She is”—he tried to think of the right adjective—“amazing to me.”

“Yes, she is.” The old woman peered at him. “You don’t think you’re in love, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, don’t be. She won’t ever be married, so there’s no point in being in love with her. There’s no point in being married here . I see them, you know.”

“Who?”

“All the young men. Well, there aren’t many. A few. Every so often. They come and sleep here with her and then in the morning they come out for breakfast with me and then they go away. We sit and talk. They’re usually very pleasant. Men are, in the morning. They should be. She’s a beautiful girl.”

“Yes, she is.”

“But there’s no future in her, you know,” the old woman said. “Sure you don’t want a grapefruit? You should eat something.”