Free Spring by David Szalay Page B

stirring the line of palm trees, the shadow of the hotel on the water…
    ‘I thought you went to the mountains,’ he says.
    Surprisingly, she laughs. ‘No, of course not.’
    And that night, the terrace on top of the hotel in the Nouvelle Ville, over the thick smog of the town. The hotel turned out to be a sort of whorehouse. They saw one of the men who worked in their own hotel making for the lift and its full ashtray with two fat whores… Yes, she had been upset. He thought she was upset with him for making them miss the minibus to the mountains, and then taking her to a whorehouse. In fact, it had been something else entirely. Nothing to do with him.
    She says, ‘A few days ago he phoned me again. He said he wanted to see me. I told him I didn’t want to see him. He insisted. He said he had something to say. So yesterday we went for a drink.’
    ‘What did he say?’
    ‘He said… he wants to try again.’
    They lie there in silence.
    ‘And what did you say?’
    ‘I said… I said… I said I’d think about it.’
    She turns her head on the pillow. He is just lying there, staring straight up. ‘Are you crying?’ she says softly.
    He shakes his head.
    ‘I said I’d tell him within a week,’ she says.
    He is seeing the ceiling fan with a strange intensity. It is as if the whole world has shrunk to that old fan—­its off-­white wicker blades, its thick stalk, the plastic housing of its motor, and the weighted string of tiny stainless-­steel spheres that hangs from the housing.
    ‘I don’t need a week, though. I know what I’m going to tell him.’
    ‘What are you going to tell him?’ And then, feeling a need to justify himself, such is his sense that Fraser King has some sort of primacy over him in this situation, ‘I think you should tell me if…’
    ‘Of course.’
    Still, she does not speak for a few seconds.
    From the start he has frequently had the sense that she is measuring him against Fraser King—­measuring him in every way, from the most obviously physical to the most ineffably emotional—­measuring him, and finding him wanting. There have been times when seeing her lost in thought—­for instance on the Eurostar as it left Lille Europe—­he experienced the precise, painful feeling that she would prefer to be there with Fraser King than with him. That she would prefer to be anywhere with Fraser King than with him. And yet now she is telling him, in effect, that this is not true. Hearing her say it, he feels a hint of euphoria. Fraser King is no longer a factor. Everything is now okay.
    It is a feeling that lasts only a few seconds, until she says, ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while.’
    And when that elicits a prolonged silence, ‘I’m sorry.’
    He turns to her and sighs and they smile wistfully at each other.
    She lets him slip his arm under her neck and snuggles up to him. The way she does this makes him improve his prognosis. When she says she does not think they should see each other ‘for a while’, what he now takes her to mean is maybe a week or two—­until she has told Fraser that she intends to turn him down. Poor Fraser.
    ‘I’m sorry, James,’ she says.
    ‘I understand.’
    ‘Thanks for being so magnanimous.’
    ‘That’s okay,’ he says. (She laughs.) Easy to be magnanimous when he is the one in her bed. He says, ‘When you say a while…’
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    She shakes her head—­he feels it move in the hollow of his neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I just… I don’t know. Sorry.’ And as if it were part of the apology, she strokes his leg with her foot.
    Still studying the ceiling fan, he twists a lock of her hair around his finger. Then he turns onto his side, and studies her face. She submits to this study with a small smile. For the first time that night she does not try to move away when he kisses her on the mouth. Indeed, she even opens her mouth, and there is an immediate surge to