Forget Richard and his horrible house of clocks. She must clarify the three propositions. Which one represented reality? Experience must teach what reason cannot.
She went into Richard's room, sat down on his bed, and looked at some magazines—gray quarterlies, a Publishers Weekly. She flipped through, shyly looking up at Richard's bedroom now and then, a pleasant, simple, white bedroom with far too many clocks. Hickory dickory dock. Her gaze retreated to the magazine, and something there caught her eye. An ad. An ad for a book by Art Turner. Art Turner? Her Art Turner? He had finished and actually published this famous book? The long-awaited work of his entire adult life was available between two cardboard covers, available to the scrutiny and scorn (scorn, surely) of the public, to the scrutiny and scorn of her, Margaret, his beneficiary and secret sworn enemy?
Of course, Art had spoken of his book being almost finished, about to come out. Months ago, when she'd last seen him. But he'd been doing that for years, for as long as Margaret had known him. Margaret grinned helplessly, malevolently. It is not enough that I succeed, said someone, someone French. My best friend must fail. Art is a monster and must fail, and he is not even my best friend.
Margaret went into her new home, the grimy rectangle, which, she now noticed, had a mop and bucket in the corner. She listened to the clocks, rattling like a drawer of tin pots. She went to the window and looked down eight stories at a dog straining at its leash, dragging a young woman on high heels, and Margaret could see the heels clicking, for she could not hear them from that distance.
Margaret went into the kitchen and thoughtfully ate a jar of preserved peaches she was sure Richard was saving to give to someone else. Today, she thought. She would begin to experience, to know, today, and she would begin with Martin.
"I will take you to Katya Kabanova," he had said, calling her when he returned to New York. "You will read the synopsis. You will see, you will understand, you will understand everything. Then I will take you back to my client's house. My client and friend. He is away in the country while I install my electronics. I will take you home with me there, and you will hear Katya Kabanova on a recording. You will hear, and you will understand everything."
At Lincoln Center, Martin stood by the fountain, holding a small nosegay of violets.
Margaret's heart beat faster. I must be in love. No one brings you flowers unless you're in love with him.
"Marguerite, my darling girl." He kissed her, first on one cheek, then the other. The feel of him, and the scent, reminded her of the airplane, when he was a stranger, silent and sprawled across her, his face buried in her breast.
"You are so kind to accompany me on my little visits here and there, and so I bring to you these flowers."
Margaret held them, wondering what to do with them during the opera, and thanked him, taking the opportunity to kiss him again, lingering there against his cheek, against him for a second too long, then self-consciously pulling away.
Maybe I can check the flowers, she thought.
"Again you have forgotten the book for my father? Marguerite, you are impossible. But at least you have not forgotten me, my friend. Ah, this is really something, to hear such singers today."
They sat down and Margaret put the flowers under her seat. When she sat up, Martin leaned close to her and put his hand on hers. His long eyelashes were half lowered, his lips drawn together in a slight smile.
"Marguerite," he whispered, in a voice almost teasing, "you have forgotten the keepsake for my father. But I have not forgotten you. I have for you a surprise."
Margaret waited as he rummaged in his jacket pocket. Something small. Jewelry-small? No. She watched as he pulled out two triangles of leather attached to elastic straps. They looked like tiny G-strings.
"You like these, Marguerite? For increased pleasure? You will wear them? A friend designed them, asked me to try them out for him. I do not force you. Some people do not like them."
What are these Belgians into? Margaret thought. Wear them? Wear them where? "Where do you wear them?"
"Here. Wear them here, now."
In Lincoln Center? Unhappily, Margaret watched the miniature G-strings dangle from his index finger.
"What I meant was, how do you put them on?" she said finally.
"Oh!" He smiled in a paternal way. "On your ears, Marguerite. On your lovely little ears."
He tenderly strapped the triangles, like little hoods, around the back of her ears. The hall sounded suddenly louder, deeper. The cellos, tuning up, resonated and echoed, and Margaret realized that the little devices were innocent enough, some kind of listening aid, gadgets devised by a high-end hi-fi fetishist.
"Horrible," she said.