Читать книгу The Supreme Orchestra - David Turgeon - Страница 8

They’d seen the bottle of gin through to its conclusion, enjoyed another of rum as an epilogue, wolfed down pasta drenched in olive oil, and exchanged an embrace or three. Faya’s lower thighs certainly felt like the softest of silks upon which Simone might hope to rest her tired hands.

And her lover’s euphoria was to Simone’s ears a music no less sweet for its undertone of bitterness. But biologists have proven the matter beyond a reasonable doubt: only men fall asleep immediately upon orgasm. Long story short, Simone slept poorly. She not only slept poorly but also woke early, altogether too early and long ahead of the tardy winter-morning light she then awaited, in a foul mood, vexed by the utterly indecent hour alleged by her alarm clock, sixfifteen to be precise. And now what?

Nothing doing, no further sleep was forthcoming. Faya opened her eyes to find Simone perpendicular in her rattan chair in the corner of the room, distractedly darkening pages with one hand in a sketchbook she held in the other.

Faya was flattered.

‘Should I pretend to masturbate?’ she asked, never averse to mixing business and pleasure.

‘No,’ said Simone, polishing off her sketch with a hint of unnecessary violence in her strokes. ‘I was just trying to draw you sleeping.’

‘But I’m not sleeping anymore,’ said Faya, stretching.

Simone was running out of subjects for her drawings. She’d stopped inviting people over to model. It wasn’t that Faya was the jealous type, exactly, but how to put it?

‘Pierre-Luc’s coming to pick me up soon,’ Simone said.

‘The hapless suitor!’

‘It’s for his class,’ Simone clarified, pinching the bridge of her nose, ‘and do you think you could?’

‘Do I think I could what?’

‘Nothing,’ said Simone.

‘Old bat,’ Faya said, laughing as she got out of bed, naked as Eve. ‘I’ll make you dinner tonight if you want. And not pasta and olive oil. I just need a little money. For groceries.’

‘Did you leave the house even once while I was gone?’ asked Simone quite pointlessly.