The Silver Metal Lover(45)

“I confess,” he said, “I rather like the taste of food.”

“You do?”

“Should I be ashamed, I wonder?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Most reprehensible.”

Our positions were reversed for an instant, our dialogue, our speech mannerisms. He was playing, but I had still learned.

“You’ve changed me,” I said. “Oh thank God you have.”

We went in, and I washed my hair. I’d hardly seen it since we’d started work. It had been bound up in scarves as I painted and glued things, and it was thick with dry shampoos because it takes so long to dry without a dryer when I wash it. But tonight I was lavish with the wall heater. As my hair began to dry before the painted mirror, I saw emerge among those blue hills and that tigerish foliage, a mane of light, the color of blond ash.

My mother had got something wrong. Or had she? Or the machines, perhaps, the coloressence charting. Or had my natural hair color simply altered as I grew older? Yes, that must be it, because— “Oh,” I said, touching my hair, “it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful in a way it never was.”

“And that,” he said, “is your own.”

I put on one of my oldest dresses, which Egyptia once gave me, and which had been hers. Demeta hadn’t thought it suited me, and neither had I, but I’d kept it for the material, which was strange, changing from white to blue to turquoise, depending on how light struck. And tonight it did suit me, and I dared to put on the peacock jacket and buttoned it, and it fit. I was slim. I was slim and tall. And my hair was moonlight. And I wept.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why—”

“Yes you do,” he said. He held me until I began to laugh instead. “Poor Demeta,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“If I told you,” he said, “I was hungry, you wouldn’t believe me?”

“No. Tell me why my mother is supposed to be ‘Poor Demeta.’”

“I think you know. Look at your hair, and ask yourself if you do.”

But I was feverish and elated. I thrust thought aside and hurried us out of the building, through the streets which now I knew quite well, up onto the only partly moving escalator on South Arbor, to the flyer platform.

We sailed into the center of the city. I wasn’t afraid of meeting anyone. Part of me, perhaps, almost wanted to.

Who, after all, would know me? (And I forgot what he had said.) As we sat in Hunger And Answer, eating charcoaled steak and tiny little roast potatoes shaped like stars, I thought: Now I can phone them, all of them. Egyptia, Clovis. My mother. The wine was red. It matched his hair. And like his own glamour, the wine didn’t interest him very much.

We walked home all across the city.

The ultimate leaves blew and crunched beneath our feet. The streets close to the Old River were shut off again, unless you bought those smelly throwaway oxy-masks at the cheek gate. We went over Patience Maidel Bridge though the center end had the Walk Fast notices up, and there were no buskers. When we got past the halfway mark, it was apparently clear, though empty. For some reason he and I started to sing, idiotic songs we made up as we walked, no longer fast, about the snarling fish in the purple water. Catch one for the cat—Oh hell—the fish has ate my cat—Oh well—dress the fish in fur—teach the fish to purr—kid me it’s the cat—Cat-fish can be swell.

The green light was on as we came off the bridge, and just as we moved down toward East Arbor, I saw there were two buskers. They weren’t performing, but seated on a rug, a boy and a girl, eating french fries out of a paper over a guitar with three broken strings.

Despite my thoughts of earlier, I hesitated. For they were Jason and Medea.

Once, a year ago, they’d done this before. It was a basic idea. Jason sang, rather badly, and Medea went around the crowd, if one was tone-deaf enough to gather, or if not, through the passersby with a plate. As she did so, she picked pockets. Usually she was caught out, or had been last time. Both were minors, but their father had had to pay a considerable fine.

“What’s wrong?” Silver asked, sensing how I held back.

“Some people I know, and don’t like.”

As we spoke, Jason looked up and right at me. An expression of astonishment went over his face. Very slowly, he nudged Medea. Their thin still eyes seemed to congeal identically. There was no other way but to walk on and meet them. Did they know about Silver? About me? About me and Silver? Or not?

“Hallo, Jane,” said Medea.

“Hallo, Jane,” said Jason.

I looked at them, pausing, my hand in Silver’s. The strength in his hand comforted me, though it seemed a long way off.

“Hallo,” I said. And then, rashly, coolly, “Do I know you?”

Jason laughed.

“Oh, I think so.”

“I think so,” said Medea. “Your name is Jane, isn’t it?”

“The bleached hair’s not bad,” said Jason. “And the diet. Does Mother know?”

Then they hadn’t been told I’d absconded from Chez Stratos. Or had they…

“Did you have a nice evening?” I inquired politely.

“Pickings were quite good,” said Medea flatly.

Jason smirked. He smirked beyond me, at Silver. Suddenly Jason’s smirk faltered.