The sound that waked her was already gone when she listened, the movement no more than the dapple of sun on the wall, on the bed empty beside her, and then again, the bleat of a dove in the branches outside and she was up, her glance at the naked fright in the mirror as startled as the one it gave her back getting past for the hall where she stopped, a bare shiver run through her at the eruption of the toilet flushing below, cowered there against the cold wall until the sounds of a cough, of a chair scraping the floor down there eased her step up the hall where she drew a bath, turning the pallor of her face to every possible angle where her eyes could contain the surfeit of those in the mirror before she took up a comb to fight the damp tangle of her hair.
In the bedroom she rattled drawers opened and closed holding this up to her, that, a veil of a blouse in a printed chiffon she hadn't worn, hadn't seen since this forthright Ragg knit sweater now, country and fall in a light grey flecked with brown though held away it looked, oddly, green enough to pick up her eyes without the urgency of something here in a hard Kelly green from a Christmas long buried and almost unworn, and she'd dressed twice, and drawn her eyes with slow concentration, before she came down the stairs.
Planes of smoke had already settled through the room where he was down on one knee pulling a magazine heap together with twine. — Do you want anything? she said there in the door, — for breakfast I mean? He'd had coffee, he told her without looking up, a cup of it there cold beside the teeming ashtray, pulling the knot tight. — Can I help you?
— Have you got any trash bags?
— I'll look… but instead she came on into the room, standing over him for a minute, picking things up, putting one aside for something else, — oh look! What is it.
— That? It's called banded malachite.
— Isn't it lovely. The greens in it, I've never seen such lovely green… she turned the rock face in her hand, — where did it come from? From Katanga, just copper sulfides it wasn't that uncommon, he went on, down again wiping cobwebs from a heap of printer's galleys to add to the litter on the table when — Oh look! is it real? She unfurled the stripes up the punctured face, the sparse bristled mane — did you shoot it?
— Shoot it?
— Well I meant, I mean if they shoot zebras, don't they? in Africa?
— They shoot zebras… and he sat down, leveling a cigarette paper, tapping the tobacco into it, watching her pick things up, put things down, a pair of field glasses turned on him wrong end to, examining him from this distance she'd put him at intent as she'd been over his hand, his ankle, tracing up the delicate blue vein with the tip of her tongue as though he'd fallen into some sort of compact up there rummaging her bed, her body nook and ravined cranny licensed as she was now to rummage through his life, holding up a yellow orange rock from the litter, dropping it back for a glossy square of colour.
— You're not throwing this away?
— Why not.
— But it's pretty. What is it.
— The northern end of the Great Rift, it's a scanning taken from a satellite. You've got it upside down.
— Oh. She let it go to the floor, — I thought it was art, and she was turning up pages in a folder of typewritten pages, — but you wrote all this? did you?
He lit the cigarette he'd made. — You said you had some trash bags?
— But did you? I mean you said you weren't a writer.
— I'm not a writer Mrs Booth! I'm, now can you, those trash bags can you…
— Mrs Booth?
— Yes, he was up again, — can you find me those trash…
— I mean honestly, Mrs Booth? She sank down on the bundled magazines — as if you'd just walked in the door like a, like some bill collector or something you didn't even, no don't pat me, no! She reached out to seize something, anything, dragged up the ragged folds of the zebra hide by the scruff and sat smoothing it, white stripe to black, — I'm not a writer Mrs Booth. I mean it's not even my name my name is Elizabeth, she thrust out at the pages in the folder — and I mean if I'm not Mrs Booth and you're not a writer then what's all that.
He had no jacket on, it was still where he'd dropped it on a chair in the living room and from behind his shoulders appeared to fall, to turn in, to shed substance, standing there watching the morning arrival of the old man out on the corner, broom in one hand and the flattened dustpan in the other as though reporting for duty. — Read it then, he said. — Take it and read it.
Instead, she said simply — You're not throwing it away too?
— Why not! He crumpled a page of it, holding it out — what do you think it is, rich intoxicating prose? poignant insights? exploring the dark passions hidden in the human heart? Rhapsodic, God knows what, towering metaphor? thwarted genius? that little glimpse of the truth you forgot to ask for? It's a chapter for a school textbook that's what it is, a chapter on life forms that appeared in the Paleozoic era half a billion years ago. It's what I did when I made a fresh start here, writing for textbooks, for encyclopaedias that's all it is. All these bookshelves? I built them myself, hadn't seen my books for years they'd been stacked up in boxes, I put up the ceiling and the floor, I laid the whole floor in here, end up staring out the window at that old man out there with his damned recessional toward the garbage can trying to look useful till I, till he finally drove me out of the house.
— But he, that old man? I mean do you know him?
— Know him! A cloud of smoke billowed at the windows, and he leaned down to stamp out the cigarette — every time I'd look up, see him out there every time I looked up pretending he's doing something worth doing look at him, ten dead leaves in his damned dustpan he's still trying to prove he was put here for some purpose? Swing low sweet chariot, staring up there at that string of toilet paper comin for to carry him home good God, you talk about bare ruined choirs? Gaping up there as if he hears their gentle voices calling, that's when I started pouring a drink in the morning.
— No but all this work, I mean I don't see what he has to do with…
— Because it's the same damned thing! here… he dug in another heap, — a high school encyclopaedia entry on Darwin, see all this blue penciling? They cut it from sixteen hundred words to thirty six, evolution theory went from three thousand to a hundred and ten the next edition it won't be there at all. Origins of life get twenty eight, twenty eight mealy mouthed words listen… he had a book, or what was left of one, pages torn from it — here's what they want now, listen. Some people believe that evolution explains the diversity of organisms on earth. Some people do not believe in evolution. These people believe that the various types of organisms were created as they appear. No one knows for sure how the many different kinds of living things came to be. No one knows for sure how many smug illiterate idiots are out there peddling this kind of drivel here's another one, listen to this. Another hypothesis about the creation of the universe with all its life forms is special creation, which gives God the critical role in creation. In some school systems, it is mandated that the evolution and special creation theories be taught side by side. That seems a healthy attitude in view of the tenuous nature of hypothesis. A healthy attitude! He flung it into the carton, — find their biology textbook, you look up geologic eras? fossil remains? Nothing. Paleontology? The word itself it's gone, it's just disappeared. That's when I started pouring a drink and watching the old man out there, watched him trying to pretend there's some damned reason to get up in the morning… He reached for the bottle, but simply stood there resting his hand on it — now, look at him now. See his lips moving when he stops to get his balance? My name is death, the last best friend am I out there with his damned broom justifying an existence that won't turn him loose, how cold your hands are, death. Come warm them at my heart God, how I learned to hate him.