Paul Theroux - O-Zone

But he did not want her to miss the point by mocking him. He said, "I've got a stack of firewood in the fuel room. For the fireplace."

Was she smiling at this?

He said, "It's probably the only firewood in New York. I've actually got a permit to burn it."

"What else would you do with it?" Bligh said,

"I've got real apples and oranges," Hooper said. "I've got onions! I've got greens!"

"Maybe that's why I feel so at home here," she said.

He thought: That's possible. He had always resisted the banalities and high tech of New York eating, and he was wealthy enough to afford real food, and a fireplace, and a private car.

And then Bligh smiled and said, "I've never heard anyone boast about onions before," and he realized that she had been sarcastic earlier.

"There's not much fresh food around," Hooper said. "There's not much water. We've got our own supply in Coldharbor — our own generator, too. Most New Yorkers eat meal trays."

And he explained how you rehydrated or thawed the meal tray. He showed her the tray, and the meal program, and the picture disc, and was about to say that city workers and pass-people from New Jersey and Brooklyn ate trays — and so did Federals, and guards, and probably some aliens too — when Bligh spoke up,

"That's what I want!"

Now, waiting for her, he switched on his monitor. She had been smiling when she left him. Was she still smiling? He watched her moving in her suite. He was heartened by the way she still smiled and sang to herself when she was alone. Hooper became very attentive in front of the monitor.

Being with Bligh meant that he had to isolate himself. He did not think it was wise at the moment to introduce her to Hardy or Moura — he believed that his enthusiasm for Bligh might seem as if he were indifferent to the missing Fizzy. Nor did he want to leave Bligh on her own. Yet it was a satisfaction to be with her. It made him feel useful and human, it allowed him a perspective on himself and his world.

And, after all, he was glad that she had not been impressed by his firewood. She had sense. She had not once mentioned drugs or money or weapons — the monotonous topics of all the other people he knew. Her presence in his unit gave the place life and color — the way dull rooms had been transformed for him by the presence of a singing bird in a cage, or cats magnificently slumbering on sofas. But he had long ago abandoned house pets.

She was singing now on the monitor screen — singing as she removed her clothes: not audible words, but a slowly lilting melody that was half in her head. She folded each garment as she took it off, and Hooper went on watching as she stood in her underpants. Liberated from her close-fitting flying suit., she stretched her arms and legs. She was fresh-faced and long-legged and smiling — the way he had first seen her.

She passed a mirror and then glanced back at it, perhaps wondering: Is this what he sees? The faces that people made in mirrors were never the faces they made in public. They seldom smiled. Bligh was not smiling now. She was looking enigmatic. They saved their secret expressions for mirrors.

Bligh went into the bathroom and took her pants off, as Hooper switched monitors, following her to the shower. She ran it so that only a dribble came out, and she washed as someone who had experienced a scarcity of water — sponging herself thoroughly but not wasting any.

She called out, "Almost ready!" — speaking to the closed door and unaware that a camera had followed her here.

And then with an urgent expression on her face, Bligh straddled the width of the tub and, still standing, and holding her slim legs apart, she arched her back and smiled. She took her vulva in both hands, parting it where it was reddest, as though she were holding two halves of an exotic mushroom. Where it was ripest its lips were softly squashed like the thin leaves on the underside of a mushroom cap. Lifting herself with her fingers, she let fly, pissing with a scorching splashing sound into the glugging tub.

Hooper turned up the volume until the sound she made was a loud crackling. He had never known another woman to piss like that, shooting it in an arc as she stood with her legs apart. She was a girl of fifteen: did that explain it? Hooper was fascinated, staring, holding his breath, hanging in front of the monitor and suffocating.

He told himself that he needed to know all her secrets. Then he sighed and came alive, and peered at her resuming her shower, and drying herself, and dressing for dinner, first her underwear, and then sheathing her slender body into another tight suit.

In that same moment Hooper felt accused by small squinting eyes and murmuring voices. He was forced to justify himself, almost to say it out loud. This is not spying, he thought. This is my only chance. 1 could lose her tomorrow and this would be all I'd have. And he swore to himself: I won't betray her.

"It's true," he said as they were eating.

Bligh looked up from her meal tray. Hooper had spoken out of a trance, surprising her after a long silence. He had been thinking again about what he had seen on the monitor.

"I don't know much about you," he said.

She looked uncertain. She had stopped eating. Then she recovered.

"Can I tell you something?" she said. "I've never loved anyone — I don't even like the word. I always thought it was something that would happen to me later, when I was older."

"You're so young," he said.

"I don't feel young," she said. "And I don't think of you as old. But I feel that you've loved other women. That you've used that word lots of times before. Lovers go on finding other people to love."

"I was married," Hooper said, feeling oddly as if this little girl had put him on the spot. "She was like me. I didn't love her. I pitied her. Because she was like me."

"Was she an Owner, too?"

"Everyone's an Owner," he said.

She laughed at him with a suddenness and a sharpness that reproached him. He knew he deserved it, and to cover his embarrassment — what made it worse was that she was not in the least offended — he said, "It was a few years ago. It was a sort of romance." He was trying to explain, but he was also trying to improve the moment and disperse the echo of her laughter. "Haven't you ever had the feeling, after someone has played music or sung a song beautifully, that you're in love with them?"

She still faced him. She said, "In that case, I would be in love with the song." Picking up her fork, she added, "But as I said, I don't know anything about love."

Hooper watched her closely. He felt insecure when she said something very logical or very wise. Then he realized how little power he actually had, because it hinted at strengths in her that he had not anticipated.

He said, "Eat up and we'll go," and she obeyed him.

On the way out, Hooper radioed Hardy, using the helmet phones.

When Hardy came on the line and heard Hooper's voice, he said, "Don't say anything more, don't explain anything— say nothing." Hardy sounded as though he were repeating something he had carefully rehearsed, "Talk to me tomorrow on my private line, and in the usual way."

He meant in code. He hung up as abruptly as he had answered.

Bligh said, "I like these helmets!"

She had already learned the trick of using a line and phones rather than hollering out of the pushed-up faceplate, and only her boots gave her trouble — she was a trifle unsteady in them.

"Masks are very stylish these days," Hooper said.

"But they're tough, too. They're safe. And the phones really work!"

She took nothing for granted. It was this lively appreciative quality that Hooper valued most in her. When she saw a button, she said, "What does it do?" and faced with a machine or a strange object, she said, "How does it work?" Hooper explained, and she liked the explanations as much as he enjoyed detaining her with them. Teaching her made him feel useful, and it renewed his interest in the city. It also reminded him of all the skills it took to live here.