The Handmaid's Tale , Margaret Atwood - Marta Dvořák Page 0,106

they know all about it, her stud farm, maybe if this doesn’t work she’ll try them next.

The door to the garage is only steps away. I cross, feet noiseless on the grass, and open it quickly, slip inside. The stairway is dark, darker than I can see. I feel my way up, stair by stair: carpet here, I think of it as mushroom-coloured. This must have been an apartment once, for a student, a young single person with a job. A lot of the big houses around here had them. A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. It pleases me to be able to remember this. Separate entrance, it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.

I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door there. He opens it himself, who else was I expecting? There’s a lamp on, only one but enough light to make me blink. I look past him, not wanting to meet his eyes. It’s a single room, with a fold-out bed, made up, and a kitchenette counter at the far end, and another door that must lead to the bathroom. This room is stripped down, military, minimal. No pictures on the walls, no plants. He’s camping out. The blanket on the bed is grey and says U.S.

He steps back and aside to let me past. He’s in his shirt sleeves, and is holding a cigarette, lit. I smell the smoke on him, in the warm air of the room, all over. I’d like to take off my clothes, bathe in it, rub it over my skin.

No preliminaries; he knows why I’m here. He doesn’t even say anything, why fool around, it’s an assignment. He moves away from me, turns off the lamp. Outside, like punctuation, there’s a flash of lightning; almost no pause and then the thunder. He’s undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can’t see his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I’m not standing. His mouth is on me, his hands, I can’t wait and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending. I knew it might only be once.

I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened.

I reach the top of the stairs, knock on the door. He opens it himself. There’s a lamp on; I blink. I look past his eyes, it’s a single room, the bed’s made up, stripped down, military. No pictures but the blanket says U.S. He’s in his shirt sleeves, he’s holding a cigarette.

“Here,” he says to me, “have a drag.” No preliminaries, he knows why I’m here. To get knocked up, to get in trouble, up the pole, those were all names for it once. I take the cigarette from him, draw deeply in, hand it back. Our fingers hardly touch. Even that much smoke makes me dizzy.

He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling. It would be better, more friendly, if he would touch me. I feel stupid and ugly, although I know I am not either. Still, what does he think, why doesn’t he say something? Maybe he thinks I’ve been slutting around, at Jezebel’s, with the Commander or more. It annoys me that I’m even worrying about what he thinks. Let’s be practical.

“I don’t have much time,” I say. This is awkward and clumsy, it isn’t what I mean.

“I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in,” he says. He doesn’t smile.

“There’s no need to be brutal,” I say. Possibly he feels used. Possibly he wants something from me, some emotion, some ackowledgement that he too is human, is more than just a seedpod. “I know it’s hard for you,” I try.

He shrugs. “I get paid,” he says, punk surliness. But still makes no move.

I get paid, you get laid, I rhyme in my head. So that’s how we’re going to do it. He didn’t like the makeup, the spangles. We’re going to be tough.

“You come here often?”

“And what’s a nice girl like me doing in a spot like this,” I reply. We both smile: this is better. This is an acknowledgement that we are acting, for what else can we do in such a setup?

“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.” We’re quoting from late movies, from the time before. And the movies then were from a time before that: