She shifted the focus, drawing out a detail of the wrist, the muscles there. She leaned forward, looking, touching the hard-edged textures of the projection, seeing what the machine had extrapolated from her intention.
She studied it a moment longer then got to work, bringing the pallet round into her lap and working at the projection with the light-scalpels, making the smallest of alterations, then shifting focus again, all the while staring at the canvas, her forehead creased in a frown of intense concentration, her body hunched, curled over the painting, her hands working the plastic surface to give it depth.
When she had finished it was almost eight and the artificial light of the wake hours showed between the slats of her blinds, but she had worked all the tiredness from her bones.
She felt like seeing him.
Her robe lay on the chair beside her bed. She put it on and went across to the comset, touching his code from memory. In a moment his face was there, on the flatscreen by her hand. She looked down at him and smiled.
‘I need to see you.'
His answering smile was tender. ‘Then I'll be over.'
The screen went dark. She sat there a moment, then turned away. Beside the bed she bent down, picking up the book she had left there only hours before. For a moment she stared at its cover as if bewitched, then opened it and, picking a passage at random, began to read.
She shuddered. It was just as Ben had said. There was no comparison. It was such a strange and wonderful book. Unseemly almost, and yet beautiful. Undeniably beautiful.
The novel she remembered had been a dull little morality tale – the story of a boy from the Clay who, taken in by a First Level family, had repaid their trust by trying to corrupt the upright daughter of the house. In that version filial piety had triumphed over passion. But this...
She shook her head, then set the book down. For all its excesses, it was so much more real, so much more true than the other. But what did it mean? What did all of these things mean? The paintings, the strange buildings beneath the City, and now this... this tale of wild moors and savage passions? What did it all add up to?
Where had Ben found these things? And why had she never heard of them before?
Why?
She sat, a small shiver – like an after-shock – rippling down her spine. Things that existed and yet had no existence. Things which, if Ben were right, were dangerous even to know about. Why should such things be? What did they mean?
She closed her eyes, focusing herself, bringing herself to stillness, calming the inner voices, then leaned back on her elbows.
He was coming to her. Right now he was on his way.
‘Then I'll be over.'
She could hear his voice; could see him clearly with her inner eye. She smiled, opening her eyes again. He had not even kissed her yet. Had not gone beyond that first small step. But surely that must come? Surely? Else why begin?
She stood, looking about her, then laughed, a small thrill passing through her. Why, he hadn't even kissed her yet.
Ben stood there in the doorway, relaxed, one hand loosely holding the edge of the sliding panel, the other combing through his hair.
‘Really...' he was saying, ‘I'd much rather treat you to breakfast.'
He seemed elated, strangely satisfied; but with himself, not with her. He had barely looked at her as yet.
She felt herself cast down. A nothing.
‘I'd like to cook you something...' she began again, knowing she had said it already. Again he shook his head. So definite a movement. Uncompromising. Leaving her nowhere. A bitter anguish clenched the muscles of her stomach; made her turn from him, lest he see. But she had seen how his eyes moved restlessly about the room, not really touching anything. Skating over surfaces, as if they saw nothing.
As if what he really saw was not in her room.
She turned and saw that he was looking at the covered canvas. But there was no curiosity in his eyes. For once he seemed abstracted from the world, not pressed right up against it. She had never seen him like this before; so excited and yet so cut off from things.
She looked at him a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up her slender clutch bag. ‘All right. I'm ready.'
They found a quiet place on the far side of The Green from the Café Burgundy. At first they ate in silence, the curtain drawn about them in the narrow booth, giving the illusion of privacy. Even so, voices carried from either side. Bright, morning voices. The voices of those who had slept and came fresh to the day. They irritated her as much as his silence. More than that, she was annoyed with him. Annoyed for the way he had brought her here and then ignored her.
She looked across the table's surface to his hands, seeing how at ease they were, lying there either side of the shallow, emptied bowl. Through the transparent surface she saw their ghostly images, faint but definite, refracted by the double thickness of the ice. He was so self-contained. So isolated from the world. It seemed, at that moment, that it would be easier for her to reach through the surface and take those ghostly hands than reach out and grasp the warm reality.
She felt a curious pressure on her; something as tangible in its effect as a pair of hands pressed to the sides of her head, keeping her from looking up to meet his eyes. Yet nothing real. It was a phantom of her own creating – a weakness in her structure.
She looked away; stared down at her untouched meal. She had said nothing of her new painting. Of why she had called him. Of all she had felt, staring at that violent image of his face. He had shut her out. Cut off all paths between them. As she sat there she wished for the strength to stand up and leave him there, sitting before his empty bowl.
As if that were possible.
She felt her inner tension mount until it seemed unendurable. And then he spoke, reaching out to take her hands in his own; the warmth of them dissipating all that nervous energy, destroying the phantoms that had grown vast in his neglect.
‘Have you ever tasted real food, Catherine?'
She looked up, puzzled, and met his eyes. ‘What do you mean, real?'
He laughed, indicating her bowl. ‘You know, I've never seen you eat. Not a morsel.' His hands held hers firmly yet without real pressure. There was a mischievous light behind his eyes. She had not seen him like this before.
‘I eat,' she said, making him laugh again at the assertiveness of her simple statement. ‘But I still don't understand you.'
‘Ah,' he said. ‘Then the answer is no.'
She shook her head, annoyed with him again, but in a different way. He was teasing her. Being unfair.
‘It's strange what becomes important,' he said. ‘For no apparent reason. Things take hold. Won't release you.'
He looked up a>?& at Ad up a>?&gain, all humour gone from his eyes. That intensity was back. That driven quality.
‘And that's your obsession, is it? Food?'
She saw at once that her joke had misfired. In this, it seemed, he was vulnerable. Wide open.
Perhaps that was what obsession was. A thing against which there was no defence. Not even humour.
So, she thought. And this is yours. The real.
For a time he said nothing. She watched the movement in his dark, expressive eyes. Sea moods beneath the vivid green. Surface and undertow. And then he looked out again, at her, and spoke.
‘Come with me. I want to show you something.'
Ben's apartment was to the north of Oxford Canton, on the edge of the fashionable student district. Catherine stood there in the main room, looking about her.
‘I never imagined...' she said softly to herself, then turned to find him there in the doorway, a wine-filled glass in each hand.
‘You're privileged,' he said, handing her a glass. ‘I don't usually let anyone come here.'
She felt both pleased and piqued by that. It was hard to read what he meant by it.
It was a long, spacious room, sparsely decorated. A low sofa was set down in the middle of the plushly carpeted floor, a small, simply moulded coffee table next to it. Unlike the apartments of her friends, however, there were no paintings on the wall, no trinkets or small sculptures on the tabletop. It was neat, almost empty.
She looked about her, disappointed. She had expected something more than this. Something like Sergey's apartment.
He had been watching her. She met his eyes and saw how he was smiling, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘It's bleak, isn't it? Like a set from some dreadfully tasteful drama.'
She laughed, embarrassed.
‘Oh, don't worry. This is' – he waved his hand in an exaggerated circle – ‘a kind of mask. A front. In case I had to invite someone back.'
She sipped her wine, looking at him sharply, trying to gauge what he was saying to her. ‘Well?' she said, ‘What were you going to show me?'
He pointed across the room with his glass. There was a panel in the far wall. A sliding panel with the faint indentation of a thumb-lock.
‘The mystery revealed,' he said. ‘Come.'
She followed, wondering why he played these games. In all else he was so direct. So much himself. Then why these tricks and evasions? What was he hiding? What afraid of?
His fingers tapped out a combination on the touch-pad. The thumb-lock glowed ready and he pressed his right thumb into the depression. The door hissed back, revealing a second room, as big as the one they were in.
She stepped through, impressed by the contrast.
For all its size it was intensely cluttered, the walls lined with shelves. In the spaces between hung prints and paintings. A small, single bed rested against the far wall, its sheets wrinkled, a simple cover drawn back. Books were piled on a bedside table and in a stack on the floor beside the bed. Real books, not tapes. Like the one he had given her. Her mouth opened in a smile of surprise and delight. But what really grabbed her attention was the apparatus in the centre of the room.