Читать книгу The City Man - Howard Akler - Страница 18

After loitering in the cold, Mona comes home. Upstairs, she steps into steam. Hot water stalks her ankles, thighs, then back. The minutes scald before she surrenders to temperature. She lies deep in the tub. Only her face remains above the surface, a mask of air. With every breath, concentric circles push outward from her head. Grow larger, larger, and then they vanish. She closes her eyes.

Early lessons. She watched the whiz ramble through three rooms on Cecil Street. No rhythm to what she saw. Squabble and arrest made most two-handed mobs tenuous. Her father and a succession of big-hipped, childless women who nurtured the girl with their own kind of instinct. Agnes, the thumb-wrestler, who expounded on tendon and guile. Bella. Her hugs were only skin and bones, but her perfume outweighed them all, a heavy lavender that hung in the air and briefly hid a mouldy avarice. And Francie, her favourite, who gave her cigarettes and showed her the boost. The three of them spent evenings at home. The old man silent in his chair. Mona, with a smoke in the corner of her mouth, tried to strike a match. Three bent matchsticks beside her feet.

Francie laughed.

Like this, honey. No no. This.

The careless tapping of ash. They left cigarette burns on the sofa and stolen silk camisoles hanging off the end table, the draped ghosts of past mothers.

She joined the whiz at fifteen. Tagged along to the train station and spent hours hustling the doniker for small change. Men passed by. She loitered near the men’s room with her face in the newspaper. One eye out. Stared at the bone in her wrist. Adolescence concealed in her father’s coat and cap, but the body inched out. Conspicuous, suddenly culpable. Gawky at five feet two.

She followed the mark inside.

Chose a stall to his right and wiped damp palms on the sides of her coat. She counted to calm herself. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. Numbers silent in her head and then her hand started to make noise. She rolled a silver dollar along the floor, from her stall to his. The slow, rattling distraction. In three revolutions of the coin, she got a glimpse of wingtips and a big white thigh. Sparse follicle. She came out of his pants pockets with quarters and dimes and a crumpled bill. The mark cursed. He was in a shackle of dropped trou, going nowhere. But Mona was off and running out the door, in the dense station crowds. Her small hands full of change.

Mona matured in three rooms. She started in the kitchen, feeling heat off the boiler and then grifted along routes of cold tile. Past dirty glasses on the counter and stolen dishes in the sink. The old man was one step behind.

Keep moving, he said.

Breath and spittle on the lobe of her ear.

Stay on the balls of your feet.

Mucid syllables turned thick in her brain. She grew conscious of every step. Moved with dolorous precision into the sitting room. Edged around the hard angles of daylight and coffee table. Bumped into a big chair.

Careful, he said.

Toes curled in her shoes. She kept moving and moving, inched into the bedroom, stepped over a hat and into the crinkle of splayed newspaper. She looked down and saw a tie still knotted. Polka-dot pattern.

Now, he said.

She slowed down. Moved forward but leaned back. Stalled her father with a gentle nudge of elbows. The floor creaked. Tension in her calves. Stress ran the calibrations of hip, a harsh curve from her buttocks to his crotch. Her prat planted with too much strain.

No no no no, he said.

His hands grew stern. He grabbed her wrist. She blinked at the ridge of knuckles and then he let her go and she blinked at the dark outline of his fingers. His imprint on her, a dark heredity.

Do it again, he told her.

She nodded and returned to the kitchen.

Mona lifts her head out of the water. She stands up. Gooseflesh in the cool air. Water rushes off her body, dripping from her fingers into the tub with the tiniest sound.