Free If it is your life by James Kelman

curiosity.
    And where was the dignity in that? But probably I was a curiosity. Curiosity. The word wasnt even in my vocabulary. I would never have described a person as ‘curious’. Especially not an ex-partner with whom one had been intimate. Only strangers are curious. Unless a behaviour had become so.
    So that was it. My behaviour had
become
curious.
    The behaviour of long-time intimates might change, might become ‘curious’. I was an eccentric as far as shewas concerned. Why not call a spade a spade, you think I’m an eccentric?
    She smiled again. Her hand was to her mouth. There was a word for this. What the goddam hell was the word!
    She reminded me of a salesman who thinks he has you cornered. What will he have you buy! You will buy something. But what? It is his choice. You have no escape. Not until he has finished enjoying himself at your expense.
    This is the mistake salesmen make. They dangle you on their fishing rod and wont reel you in, like a cat with a mouse and to hell with metaphors. Once he toys with you your chance arrives.
    They always become arrogant. Salesmen amuse me. They really do. I had been dealing with them for years. Their major psychological error is the search for applause, whether from you as customer-victim or one of their colleague-perpetrators. You see them grinning; cats at the cream jug.
    We have all been salesmen at one time but generally we are not, generally we are the fish trapped in the net, preparing to be served on a plate. Now here was Jennifer. My God but it surprised me that she too, she too …
    What is it? she said.
    I didnt think you would remember the old Duponzers.
    Are you serious! I’m not likely to forget them. She shook her head. She blinked at me. Why did she blinkat me? Now she frowned. Frowned! They provided half our conversation, she said.
    Oh well that’s not fair, I said, that really is not fair.
    She shrugged.
    It isnt. I stared at her. I found her incredible. Each gesture she made, no matter how minuscule, was a question. Excluding words her language contained the widest vocabulary of anyone I ever met, including my father who was a scholar if not a gentleman. He was too, mean old bastard. But he never tired of learning; even on his deathbed. Bring me my Thesaurus! His favourite book. He had three of them. That was my legacy. Two were different editions of the same thing but the third was a wee old edition of Roget’s Everyman, volume 1, 2 or 3.
    Jennifer had a wider vocabulary than my father and it all stemmed from the body. Words had nothing to do with it. Every last move was a comment, each part of her body, everything, from fingers to toes, every indice a sentence, a statement. If she wiggled an ear I was obliged to answer: What am I to do? What do you ask of me? What is it you want!
    Which is what I had never discovered.
    But what did I want of her? She said I was the most suspicious man she ever had known. She meant ‘slept with’. She always slept with her boyfriends. From girl-hood upwards. She experimented. She told me herself. I hated it. I wish she hadnt but she had. Oral sex too. I hated it, hated it. Not the act but just, my God, why did she tell me? I did not want to hear about it, none of that stuff, I didnt want to know about those guys.I imagined them laughing. Macho shits, drooling over their beer.
    Jennifer went her own way. She always did. That was that. That was indeed that. If she had been male she would have been into science; something I was never into myself.
    I pointed at the Duponzers and then to the big sign at the corner of the bar. See that, I said, they go shopping together and they eat bar meals together. They do meal-deals if you havent noticed, they give you membership cards, you buy three beers and they give you a bowl of chips and a slice of pizza; another beer and you get these onion things in batter. There is nothing wrong in that. I dont think so anyway. Maybe other people do. If other people think so, well then,