Thirty Girls. Susan Minot

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      They were back from their mission, she told herself. Mission was what Harry called it. They’d had a nice moment, she explained to herself. So that was probably that. She would be happy with that, then. Happiness came in pieces anyway. One had to be happy with the pieces as they came. She was trained in gathering pieces. When you had the bad luck to love a person who cared for drugs more than you, then you adjusted to the netherworld of Nothing’s perfect and Whoever said you got what you wanted and It will get better. Those pieces were sharp and cut you, but you still collected them. You justified the cuts.

      They went back to Harry’s house. He referred to it as his parents’ house, even though he’d grown up there. A few spotlights shone outside a garage and at one end of a large roof. She followed him across a dark lawn of stiff tropical grass to the guesthouse. Inside was a wide stone fireplace and heavy wooden furniture and to the side a small bedroom with a mattress of clean sheets in the middle of a cement floor. Harry was under the covers when she returned from the bathroom and she switched off the living room light. She slid in next to him and had the lovely surprise, which always remained surprising, of the first contact with the skin of another warm body which felt, well, like a miracle.

      He turned her sleepily. She wasn’t wishing for anything then, only this. All right, more of this, then. She felt as if she were on a train, jerking to a start. The slow chugging of the engine was her body coming alive again. As the speed increased, possibilities of the trip expanded. Maybe the journey would not be short. There was hope in the body against her. Maybe it would be a long trip. The Orient Express or the Trans-Siberian Railway. She was riding the shaky rails. She was going faster. Now she was being hurled up against the ceiling.

      When she landed in slow motion some time later, her gaze drifted to a blurry window where dawn had turned the sky glass-blue through a pane of lead squares like the windows you see in old churches.

      In the late morning, returning to the cottage, Jane found Lana having breakfast in bed with her silver tray. Lana patted the pillow beside her and poured Jane a cup of coffee from a silver pot. Raymond has buggered off, Lana said. He’s tossed us for a safari job. Don’t blame him, really. But—she used a pointedly hopeful tone—Don wants to come.

      Don?

      Lana shrugged, as if uncertain whether she was ready to promote the idea. He thinks it might be interesting. He has a car …

      Jane looked at her.

      Lana bit her toast and studied Jane’s face, gauging her reaction. He can always help with the cash flow? she said, chewing.

      Later after dinner Lana and Don peeled themselves up off the Balinese bed and slipped away to Lana’s room. It was an early night. Jane and Harry stayed collapsed on the pillows, upholstered in hemp and stamped with a black and beige triangular pattern. In the deeper cushions Pierre was asleep.

      I’ll take you, Harry said out of nowhere.

      Where?

      To Uganda. I’ll drive.

      You will?

      Sure. I’ve got a truck.

      That would be great, she said. Really?

      He looked at her. His face was an inch from hers and his lowered eyes were cool. I just said I would.

      What about the cows? she said.

      Screw the cows.

      Really?

      Keep saying really and I’ll change my mind.

      A warmth spread in her chest.

      She couldn’t pay him, she told him, but could cover the gas and his room and board. She had a minor expense account from the magazine, she said, actually, hardly believing it herself, since she had no real credentials as a journalist.

      It’s better if you don’t hire me, Harry said. If I’m hired I usually get sacked.

      The guest room where Jane was staying had been painted by Lana, salmon and green. Its lantern threw half-moons of light on the stucco wall. Harry got in with her under the pink mosquito net.

      He had been with her now three nights and each night in a different bed in a different place. She was in that early lull of physical happiness when going over it was a pleasure, with no real qualms yet. She felt a sinking deeper. And now he was coming with them on her trip. It’ll be what it is, she said to herself, as proof she was without illusion, but having no more idea what It’ll be what it is meant other than a hope against the sinking.

      Again departure was postponed so Lana threw another dinner party.

      She went into action, arranging what needed to be done, talking to the cook, unruffled and focused. Her energy spread outward and Jane helped her push three tables together and move brass elephants. Lana shook out a long white tablecloth stamped with silver and blue paisley which landed like a sail.

      From Jaipur, she said. Lana’s things each had a story—linen napkins were from Porta Portese in Rome, gold-dotted plates passed down from her grandmother in Paris, the striped red and green Venetian glasses from the lover trying to woo her back. That worked, she said, for a while.

      The cottage had four small rooms packed like a treasure chest. In her thirty-six years Lana had covered a lot of ground. There were the small business ventures: lanterns from Morocco, the alabaster Indian lamps, the belts with Maasai beading. She’d worked as a set designer and fund raiser, started schools for the Rendille in the bush. Her tastes were both extravagant and rustic. A chandelier hung from a water buffalo horn on the terrace. She was generous whether flush or broke. For all the pleasure she found in things, she did not have the hoarding instinct of the materialist. You liked her bracelet? Here. She would unclasp it from her wrist and snap it onto yours.

      She held up a conch shell filled with salt. Sweet, she said. She had dressed for dinner in a short satin slip, boots laced to her knees and dark lipstick. Now, she said, most important, the lighting. They lit lanterns and candles which had been placed in abundance around the cottage on stands and floors and tables crowded with silver cups.

      How old is Harry? Jane said.

      What do you think?

      Twenty-six? Jane said tremulously. Five?

      More like twenty-three, darling.

      You’re kidding.

      Or twenty-two. What, you care? Age doesn’t matter.

      It doesn’t?

      For dinner there was a platter of grill-marked chicken sprinkled with singed herbs, roast pork beside peeled potatoes, stewed eggplant in tomato sauce, green beans shiny with butter and garlic, curried lentils, ribs, shredded cabbage, sliced avocado. Lana’s housekeeper and another woman carried dishes in and out of the kitchen, taking orders from Lana in Swahili, without seeming to hear them.

      By the time the cook’s specialty, coconut flan, was brought out, no one at the table seemed to notice, deep in conversation or having left altogether. Many were out on the concrete terrace, dancing to the turned-up music. By the end of the night however there was no pudding left in the dish. The servants slipped in and out, clearing the plates, leaving glasses and candles and flowers, and a spotlessly washed-up СКАЧАТЬ