“Enjoying your weekend?” he asked.
I leaned over and scanned the bill on the counter, trying to pay attention to the line items as he explained what had been wrong with my car’s workings.
As usual when a mechanic talks to me I put considerable effort into looking interested, even respectful. I was intent on that effort, though it warred against my instinctive dislike of John, when I detected someone behind me, felt or heard the brush of thick, expensive fabric against itself. I registered that the doorbell hadn’t chimed this time and there was a scent, subtle but clear, which I had to identify—much as I wished not to—as a familiar cologne.
Beefy John, still talking about the car, looked steadily over my shoulder; I turned.
“Hey there, honey,” said Ned.
THERE WERE THREE thinly padded, black folding chairs along the wall, beside a fake potted plant with dusty leaves. I sat down on one. The fake plant was two times a standin, I thought, as a fake plant it stood in for a real one, and then the dust on it, the full neglect, made it seem so purely symbolic that it became an imitation not only of a plant but of an imitation plant.
I wished I could stare at that homely fake plant forever, and never, ever look upon Ned’s face.
I was ignoring Beefy John too, or ignoring the blank space left by him, because he must have retreated into the private recesses of the establishment. I felt a vacancy in the space over the counter. Had he given me back my car keys? It was as though I’d lost time, I’d skipped some minutes and found things changed. Instead of looking up I was staring at the fake plant and at myself—but from a great lunar or stellar distance, across a reach of airless space. I might have been a pushpin on a map, a piece on a board game, any tiny, manufactured item on a wide background.
I couldn’t choose a direction for my attention. I failed to assimilate.
“Relax, sweetheart, it’s all good,” said Ned.
His presence and the vapid words were separate—the words, I thought as I gazed at a streak in the plastic leaves’ dust, an impressively hollow comfort. In the instant when I turned from the counter I’d caught a flash of his handsome face, enough to register his features; but now I was insanely reluctant to raise my gaze to him again.
It was insane, I realized that—some kind of rapid breakdown. But I couldn’t change the angle of my head. I sat heavy in the chair, sack-like. After a minute he lowered himself into a squat in front of me.
And even squatting he stayed graceful, not subordinate the way a squat can make you. I kept my head bowed as long as I could, avoiding the solid offense of his beauty. Before me rose an immaculate camelhair coat, unbuttoned; a well-cut dark-blue suit beneath it, complete with downy-white shirt and silver tie; crisp, businesslike wrinkles on each side of his knees where the cloth was stretched taut. Yes: even the wrinkles in his slacks possessed a symbolic efficiency. They bracketed his sculpted knees concisely, minutely telegraphing competence, even mastery.
I remembered being in bed with him, in bed where he’d always been so perfect that it disguised his lack of emotion. It didn’t occur to me to wonder about what wasn’t given.
Ned was still exactly the man he intended to be.
Inevitably I found myself looking into his face. He had a light and pleasant tan that must have looked as out of place in the Alaskan winter as it did in Maine. I tried to calm myself by picturing him in a sunbed at Planet Beach, slathering lotion onto his body, arranging the little goggles onto his face. I remembered how the fatless musculature of his torso was maintained with daily bouts of grunting resistance training. But it was no use, no matter how hard I tried to belittle him I couldn’t reduce the feeling of beauty and threat he imparted.
Except for the anxiety of his nearness, though, I found I was less susceptible to his looks than I remembered being. I could see him impersonally by placing the barrier of my dislike between us. As I did this, his looks became less the features of a living person and more a formal structure—less animal than mineral, transmuted into a polymer that encased him in its petrochemical sheen.
Had he already sent his guys to the motel? Henchmen, I repeated silently, henchmen, a comical word I’d never thought I’d have a use for. Was Lena already with them? Had her babysitters been pushed aside or persuaded?
I felt a twinge of panic. What should I do? What was the right course of action? Call the Lindas? Don? 911? My cell phone was in my bag, on the counter; there were my car keys beside it. I could grab them and run.
I couldn’t decide. I was useless. I tried to stall.
“A suit and tie? On Saturday?”
He smiled at me indulgently, as though what was coming from my mouth was empty breath. There was no need for him to acknowledge my speech.