Great House: A Novel - By Nicole Krauss Page 0,120

Adam’s friends arrive, the same ones I’d met around the table under the fig tree, the girl with the thin red dress (now it’s yellow) and her friend with dark bangs across her forehead. They greet me with kisses on the cheek as if I were one of them. The band swaggers onto the stage, the drums begin to thump, and at the first few notes of the guitar the straggly crowd claps, someone whistles from behind the bar, and though I know I am not one of them, that I am in every way a stranger in their midst, I am filled with gratitude to be so simply accepted. I feel an urge to take the girl in the yellow dress by the hand and whisper to her, but I can’t think of the right words. The music gets louder and more discordant, the lead singer screams in a raw voice, and though I don’t want to distinguish myself from the others I can’t help but think he’s taking it a bit far, exaggerating things a little, so I find my way to the bar to buy myself a drink. When I turn, the girl with dark bangs is standing next to me. She shouts something to me, but the music overpowers her tiny voice. What? I shout back, trying to read her lips, and she repeats it, bursting into a giggle, something about Adam, but I still can’t understand, so the third time she leans right up to my ear and yells, He’s in love with his cousin, then leans back, covering her smile, to see if I’ve heard. I scan the crowd and when my eyes find Adam making a show of holding up his lighter while the singer croons I turn back and return the girl’s smile, and with a look I tell her that if she thinks she knows the whole story she’s wrong. I walk away. I have that drink and then I have another. The singer goes back to screaming in excess, but now the music grows rounder, brighter, and suddenly Adam grabs my hand from behind and tugs me outside, and I know I won’t have to wait much longer now. We get onto his bike—it’s nothing now for me to climb on behind and fit myself to him—and I don’t need to ask where we’re going because I’ll go anywhere.

Here we are back in the grimly lit concrete entryway of Gad’s apartment. We’re going up the stairs and Adam is singing off-key, he’s taking the steps by twos. I’m breathless. Inside everything is the same, only Gad isn’t home. Adam searches the drawers and shelves for something while I switch on the stereo and press play, so sure am I of what he is searching for and what is about to happen. The CD skips to life, the music floats out of the speakers; it’s possible I begin to sway or to dance. Turn it off, he says, coming up behind me, and before I can feel him I can smell him like an animal. Why? I ask, turning with a flirtatious smile, Because, he says, and I think, All the better in silence. I reach up and take his face in my hands. With a moan I press my body into his, searching with my groin for something hard, I part my lips and bring them to his, my tongue slips in and tastes the heat of his mouth; I was starving, Your Honor, I wanted everything at once.

It lasts only a moment. Then he shoves me away. Get off of me, he growls. Not understanding, I reach for him again. With his palm he pushes my face and throws me down with such force that I fall back onto the sofa. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, his hand which I see now holds the keys to the apartment filled with the dead people’s furniture. From far off, the understanding arrives that they are not dead after all. Are you out of your mind? he hisses, his eyes shining with hostility and also something familiar I cannot place at first. You could be my mother, he spits, and then I realize that it is disgust.

I lie sprawled on the sofa, astonished and humiliated. He turns to leave, but stops at the door. The purple suede purse sits in the entry where I’d left it when we came in. He picks it up. In his hands