‘I’m a cripple,’ I said. ‘They feel sorry for me.’
‘They feel —’ Gregory almost choked. ‘Did you hear that, Loots? They feel sorry for him.’
‘I don’t feel sorry for him,’ Loots said, ‘do you?’
‘Well,’ Gregory said, sounding thoughtful, ‘it can’t be easy.’
He missed the point completely. As usual.
‘She takes me to motels,’ I said. ‘We always go to motels. The Cherry, the Nero, the Astra — I know them all now. Or we sleep in other people’s houses, friends of hers.’
‘Where does she live?’ Loots asked.
‘That’s just it. I’ve no idea.’ I stirred some sugar into my coffee. ‘I think she likes being anonymous,’ I said. ‘This whole thing with me, it’s not because she’s sorry for me, but it is because I’m blind. Because I can’t see her. That’s what she likes — being invisible. It makes her feel less pressured. More free. It’s kind of a fantasy for her.’
‘Did I tell you about Anton?’ Loots said.
‘Anton?’ I shook my head.
It was a week ago, Loots said. There had been a knock on the door of his apartment and when he opened it his old friend Anton was standing there. Anton was a clown. He belonged to a circus that toured the provinces, playing to small towns and villages. They talked about the old days for a while, but Anton became increasingly restless and distracted. In the end Loots had to ask him if there was something wrong.
‘This is going to sound strange.’ The clown coughed nervously into his fist. ‘It’s The Invisible Man. He’s disappeared.’
Loots stared at his friend.
‘He just vanished,’ Anton said, ‘into thin air.’
‘The Invisible Man?’ Loots said.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s disappeared?’
‘I told you it would sound strange,’ Anton said.
He told Loots that The Invisible Man was the best act in the circus, the act people came to see. It always began in the same way. The Invisible Man walked into the ring and started telling a funny story. He looked funny, too: short, with bright-red hair and a scar on his chin. Soon everyone was laughing. They forgot he was supposed to be, you know, Invisible. Then, suddenly, halfway through the story, he vanished. Just by turning round.
‘It’s like he hasn’t got a back,’ Anton explained. ‘It’s like there’s only one side to him.’
Without him, Anton continued, they would probably be ruined. They’d have to look for other work. And how could they do that? The circus was all they knew. The circus was their life. Anton’s voice was cracking and his eyes had filled with tears.
‘And you think he might be here,’ Loots said, ‘in the city?’
Anton nodded. ‘Someone heard him talking about it. I’ve been sent up here, to find him.’
He needed help, though — Loots’ help; there was nobody else he could ask.
I sipped my coffee, imagining a clown in Loots’ apartment. His voice would probably be thin and quaint, like the high notes on a mouth organ. I saw tears dropping on to the toes of an enormous pair of shoes.
‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re helping him?’
‘I’m trying to,’ Loots said.
He’d tracked down a woman who used to work with The Invisible Man. Her name was Madame Fugazi. She lived in a basement somewhere in the 7th district. But she hadn’t seen The Invisible Man for fifteen years. ‘Yeah, it must’ve been fifteen years, at least,’ she told Loots. ‘He weren’t much good in them days.’ Madame Fugazi had dyed black hair that was flat at the back where she had slept on it. ‘He used to bow and wave his arms about and do all that stuff they do,’ she said, ‘and then he’d kind of spin round fast and he was supposed to be, you know, gone, and I’d have to yell out, “I can still see you.” He really hated it when I did that.’
Loots asked her if she had any idea where he might be now.
‘I told you, love. It was fifteen years ago.’
But as he turned to leave she spoke again: ‘You’d have found him easy in them days. He couldn’t have disappeared, even if he’d wanted to.’ She licked her finger and rubbed at a stain on her leopardskin print dress. ‘Now I’m not so sure. People say he got better at it.’
‘Three steak,’ Leon shouted from behind the counter.
Loots stood up. ‘I’ll get it.’
I waited until he was sitting down again. ‘One thing occurs to me.’
‘What’s that?’ Loots said.
‘Suppose he doesn’t want to be found?’
‘Well, maybe he doesn’t, but we don’t know that, do we?’ Loots poked at his pickled cabbage with a fork. ‘For all we know, he could be in some kind of trouble …’
Gregory leaned back in his chair.
‘About this Nina,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, it’s a fantasy for her?’
The Relax Motel, early December.
One of Nina’s favourites, the Relax. It had a green neon sign with the name of the motel on it. The first two letters didn’t work: all you could see from the motorway was the word LAX flashing on and off. A few years back, in the forecourt, they had built a swimming-pool. On the black metal fence that surrounded it was a sign that said, GUESTS ONLY. The pool was empty. According to Nina it was always empty, even in the summer; she said the only time it had water in it was when it rained. The place was run by an old woman who had rheumatism. Some days she couldn’t use her hands at all. She couldn’t hold a pen. You had to write out your own bill.
Our room had cheap wood-panelling and cone-shaped orange lampshades, and if you put a coin in the box on the wall, the whole bed started shaking. Nina was lying on her side, one hand under her head, the other in between her thighs. The knot on the blindfold had come loose; it had fallen from her eyes. The curtains drawn behind her. The lights in the room switched off. Like people in the suburbs.
I heard a car pull up down below. A door opened, then another. Two voices arguing. Nina reached for a cigarette and lit it. It began to rain.
I followed the faint light that filtered from the car-park into our room. I noticed how it chose parts of her body, made different arcs out of her shoulder, her hip, her calf, her heel. She looked as though she’d been drawn in mercury.
‘I miss you.’
She turned to look at me. ‘What?’
‘When you’re not there. I miss you.’
‘You’re with me now,’ she said, ‘right next to me …’
‘Am I?’ I rolled on to my back. ‘Am I really?’
‘I told you before. That’s not what we’re about.’
‘What are we about? Tell me again.’
‘This,’ she said, and took my hand and brought it to her breast. I knew it so well already, that curve up to her nipple, and the nipple itself, no bigger than a medal, and pale, but not too pale, the skin there soft and glossy. I watched the side of my thumb as it moved in the gentle, semi-circular patterns I had learned from her.
‘I’ve been lying to you,’ I said.
Her nipple stiffened as I spoke.
‘It’s not lying, exactly. It’s just something I haven’t told you.’ My thumb still moving.
‘I’m not blind.’ I paused, wanting to be clear. ‘Well, I am in the daytime, but not at night. At night I can see.’
She sat up, backed away and leaned against the headboard, staring at me. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she said.
‘It’s true. The white stick, the dark glasses — I don’t really need them at night. I just carry them around in case I’m out late and it gets light.’.
She laughed, but the laugh cut out suddenly, as if someone had turned the volume on her down to zero.
‘You’re the only person I’ve told,’ I said. ‘Since I left the clinic, I mean. You mustn’t tell anyone else either. Nobody knows —’