“Critics hated it,” Louise announced, while adjusting her glasses, and then she lit a cigarette. “One British journalist said he’d much rather give a boy or girl prussic acid than let them read this novel. To be honest, I’m not sure I like the book either, but there’s something in there that captures my attention.”
“What’s it about?”
“Lesbianism in Edwardian England, class differences, Christianity, spiritualism, World War I, cross-dressing.” Louise winked. It seemed to Jack everyone was doing that in his general direction. “A smorgasbord, really.”
The girl went on to say she despised red roses but loved yellow ones, she smoked 16mg Paul Jones cigarettes — only at night, Jack recalled — and liked to drink Bollinger champagne. She had two glasses over dinner. Her preferred toothpaste was Ipana, and she adored fashion designer Walter Plunkett.
“You know, I have a Walter Plunkett suit,” Jack decided to bring up.
“Really? The man is an illusionist with his sense of line, harmony, and of challenging both. Oh, my — you’ll have to show it to me.”
He neglected to mention it was an overlarge hand-me-down from a dead man (the Big O), that he’d worn the threads on the first occasion they met, when Bulkhead attacked the bank — a time Louise appeared not to remember at all — and that the suit had been summarily destroyed.
After a lengthy hesitation, Jack’s hand fell onto the girl’s, and they entwined fingers.
Louise found out Jack had no particular preference for toothpaste, dress-sense, music, film or flowers. He didn’t smoke or drink. He had too many books he loved to narrow down specific examples, and favourite food went unanswered.
An entrée of California rolls and a generous serving of pasta intervened, but Jack bypassed the seventy-two-ounce King Henry VIII steak the Brick had suggested.
“You don’t like talking about yourself, do you?” Louise decided, well into the evening.
“Not really,” Jack admitted. “I also don’t have much to say.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. That would make you the complete antithesis of most of the men I’ve known.”
“That many, huh?”
“A fair few.”
“Are you disappointed this time round?”
“No.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s a nice change.”
“Thanks. I think.”
The conversation then pivoted to childhood toys, something Jack felt he could participate in. After mentioning some plastic rocket ships and anonymous toy soldiers he’d owned — recycled hand-me-downs from the neighbours’ kids — Louise nattered on about her favourite soft toy tiger, Mister Hobbes, a velveteen cat called Perri-Purr, and a doll named Tarpé Mills that still took up prime real-estate on top of her bed.
Jack couldn’t help wondering if she’d had a childhood — he very much doubted this — and the notion made her ‘memories’ far more tantalizing than his genuine experience of growing up.
Not that he told her much about this. Jack kept almost everything under the cuff, since he recognized there was nothing with which to dazzle the girl. To the contrary, she’d likely do a runner. So, instead, he encouraged Louise to talk about herself, and every minor such detail made him more enamoured.
After the dinner plates had been cleared, Jack placed his wallet on the table-top and decided to teach Louise how to play an old game that’d kept him sane on long, lonely nights by himself in his box in Melbourne: Three Coin Hockey.
While their waiter simmered nearby — either he fretted about the surface of the table, or the unnecessary delay in his tip — the girl first frowned, pondered, and then smiled. Within five minutes, she giggled a lot as they played, and inside fifteen minutes started to win.
The ideal proposition to work off their excess culinary baggage was another meandering walk to the girl’s apartment. Their conversation had trickled off. Louise’s right hand was in Jack’s left; they looked at one another and beamed more often than they needed to speak.
On the way, the two of them passed a shop with its shutters down. Painted across the metal, in slaphappy manner, was the second batch of graffiti Jack had seen:
BOPS GO HOME!
Nonsensical tagging appeared to be a growing fad in the city of Heropa, although they saw no more over the next thirty minutes, and finally Louise’s brownstone reared above.
Jack counted the stairs to the front entrance: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten steps were nothing to fear.
“Can I come up?” he ventured, braver still this time.
“I’d love you to. But I wonder if my father-in-law will be in bed. Hard to say — he works such odd hours.”