You’re not dead yet. You’re a lot more alive than many people.
This isn’t good enough for Rennie. She wants something definite, the real truth, one way or the other. Then she will know what she should do next. It’s this suspension, hanging in a void, this half-life she can’t bear. She can’t bear not knowing. She doesn’t want to know.
She goes into the bathroom, intending to brush her teeth. In the sink there’s a centipede, ten inches long at least, with far too many legs, blood-red, and two curved prongs at the back, or is it the front?It’s wriggling up the side of the slippery porcelain sink, falling back again, wriggling up, falling back. It looks venomous.
Rennie is unprepared for this. She’s not up to squashing it, what would she use anyway? And there’s nothing to spray it with. The creature looks far too much like the kind of thing she’s been having bad dreams about: the scar on her breast splits open like a diseased fruit and something like this crawls out. She goes into the other room and sits down on the bed, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. She waits five minutes, then wills herself back into the bathroom.
The thing is gone. She wonders whether it dropped from the ceiling in the first place, or came up through the drain, and now where has it gone? Over the side onto the floor, into some crack, or back down the drain again? She wishes she had some Drano and a heavy stick. She runs some water into the sink and looks around for the plug. There isn’t one.
There’s a lounge where you can have afternoon tea; it’s furnished with dark green leatherette chairs that look as if they’ve been hoisted from an early-fifties hotel foyer in some place like Belleville. Rennie waits on one of the sticky chairs while they set a table for her in the diningroom, grudgingly, since she’s half an hour late. In addition to the chairs there’s a glass-topped coffee table with wrought-iron legs on which there are copies of
Time
and
Newsweek
eight months old, and a mottled plant. Gold tinsel is looped around the tops of the windows, left over from Christmas; or perhaps they never take it down.
The tablecloths from the night before have been removed; underneath, the tables are grey formica with a pattern of small red squares. Instead of the pleated linen fans there are yellow papernapkins. Rennie looks around for Paul but there’s no sign of him. The hotel seems fuller, though. There’s an older woman, white, thin-faced, by herself, who stares perkily around the diningroom as if expecting to be charmed by everything, and an Indian family, the wife and grandmother in saris, the little girls in frilled sundresses. Luckily, Rennie is placed one table away from the older woman, who looks unpleasantly Canadian. She doesn’t want to have a conversation about scenery or the weather. The three little girls parade the room, giggling, being chased and pinched playfully by the two waitresses, who smile for them in a way they do not smile for adults.
The older woman is joined by another like herself, plumper but with hair as tight. Listening to them, watching them consult their little books, Rennie discovers that they aren’t Canadian but German: one of that army of earnest travellers that is everywhere now on the strength of the Deutschmark, even in Toronto, blue-eyed, alert, cataloguing the world. Why not? thinks Rennie. It’s their turn.
The waitress comes and Rennie orders yoghurt and fresh fruit.
“No fresh fruit,” says the waitress.
“I’ll take the yoghurt anyway,” says Rennie, who feels she’s in need of some friendly bacteria.
“No yoghurt,” says the waitress.
“Why is it on the menu then?” says Rennie.
The waitress looks at her, straight-faced but with her eyes narrowing as if she’s about to smile. “Used to be yoghurt,” she says.
“When will there be some again?” Rennie says, not sure why this should all be so complicated.
“They got Pioneer
This isn’t good enough for Rennie. She wants something definite, the real truth, one way or the other. Then she will know what she should do next. It’s this suspension, hanging in a void, this half-life she can’t bear. She can’t bear not knowing. She doesn’t want to know.
She goes into the bathroom, intending to brush her teeth. In the sink there’s a centipede, ten inches long at least, with far too many legs, blood-red, and two curved prongs at the back, or is it the front?It’s wriggling up the side of the slippery porcelain sink, falling back again, wriggling up, falling back. It looks venomous.
Rennie is unprepared for this. She’s not up to squashing it, what would she use anyway? And there’s nothing to spray it with. The creature looks far too much like the kind of thing she’s been having bad dreams about: the scar on her breast splits open like a diseased fruit and something like this crawls out. She goes into the other room and sits down on the bed, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. She waits five minutes, then wills herself back into the bathroom.
The thing is gone. She wonders whether it dropped from the ceiling in the first place, or came up through the drain, and now where has it gone? Over the side onto the floor, into some crack, or back down the drain again? She wishes she had some Drano and a heavy stick. She runs some water into the sink and looks around for the plug. There isn’t one.
There’s a lounge where you can have afternoon tea; it’s furnished with dark green leatherette chairs that look as if they’ve been hoisted from an early-fifties hotel foyer in some place like Belleville. Rennie waits on one of the sticky chairs while they set a table for her in the diningroom, grudgingly, since she’s half an hour late. In addition to the chairs there’s a glass-topped coffee table with wrought-iron legs on which there are copies of
Time
and
Newsweek
eight months old, and a mottled plant. Gold tinsel is looped around the tops of the windows, left over from Christmas; or perhaps they never take it down.
The tablecloths from the night before have been removed; underneath, the tables are grey formica with a pattern of small red squares. Instead of the pleated linen fans there are yellow papernapkins. Rennie looks around for Paul but there’s no sign of him. The hotel seems fuller, though. There’s an older woman, white, thin-faced, by herself, who stares perkily around the diningroom as if expecting to be charmed by everything, and an Indian family, the wife and grandmother in saris, the little girls in frilled sundresses. Luckily, Rennie is placed one table away from the older woman, who looks unpleasantly Canadian. She doesn’t want to have a conversation about scenery or the weather. The three little girls parade the room, giggling, being chased and pinched playfully by the two waitresses, who smile for them in a way they do not smile for adults.
The older woman is joined by another like herself, plumper but with hair as tight. Listening to them, watching them consult their little books, Rennie discovers that they aren’t Canadian but German: one of that army of earnest travellers that is everywhere now on the strength of the Deutschmark, even in Toronto, blue-eyed, alert, cataloguing the world. Why not? thinks Rennie. It’s their turn.
The waitress comes and Rennie orders yoghurt and fresh fruit.
“No fresh fruit,” says the waitress.
“I’ll take the yoghurt anyway,” says Rennie, who feels she’s in need of some friendly bacteria.
“No yoghurt,” says the waitress.
“Why is it on the menu then?” says Rennie.
The waitress looks at her, straight-faced but with her eyes narrowing as if she’s about to smile. “Used to be yoghurt,” she says.
“When will there be some again?” Rennie says, not sure why this should all be so complicated.
“They got Pioneer
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