A Change of Skin Read Free Page B

novel written for immediate consumption: recreation. Michel Foucault speaks:
    â€œEt puisque cette magie a été prévue et
    décrite dans les livres, la différence
    illusoire qu’elle introduit ne sera jamais
    qu’une solitude enchantée.”
    Les Mots et les Choses
    Â 
    Î”   You were going to tell me some day, Elizabeth, that the snail was moving across the wall and you, lying on the bed, lifted your head and saw first the silver track and followed it so slowly that several seconds passed before your eyes reached the dark shell. You felt drowsy and there you were on the bed in the second-rate hotel with your neck stretching out and your hands in your armpits and all you saw was a snail on a wall of peeling green paint. Javier had worked the cord of the drapes and the room was in shadow. Now he was unpacking, and you turned your head and watched him release the catches of the blue leather suitcase and pull the zipper and raise the top. Just then, Javier looked up and saw a second snail, this one gray-striped and motionless within its shell. The first snail approached the second and Javier looked down and admired the perfect order with which he had packed his clothing for this trip. You bent your knees and drew your heels back until they touched your buttocks and now you too observed that there was a second snail on the wall, that the first had stopped beside the second and was showing its head with the four tentacles. With one hand you smoothed your skirt while you studied the mouth of the snail, an open gap right in the middle of the wet horned head. Now the head of the second snail appeared too. Their shells were like small spirals pasted on the wall. Their sticky slaver dripped beneath them. The two sets of tentacles touched. You spread your eyes wider and wished that you could hear more acutely, microscopically as it were. The two soft driveling bodies slowly emerged from their shells and immediately, with a suave vigor, embraced. Javier, standing, was watching them. You, on the bed, spread your arms. The snails trembled lightly. Slowly they separated. They observed each other for a few seconds and then returned to their shells. You stretched a hand out and found your package of cigarettes on the table beside the bed. You lit a cigarette and wrinkled your eyebrows. Javier began to lift his trousers from the suitcase: the blue linen slacks, the cream linen slacks, the gray silk slacks. He laid them on the bed and smoothed them, passing his hand over the wrinkles. He went to the ancient wardrobe and got some coat hangers, carefully selected the least bent ones, returned to the suitcase on the bed. You observed every movement and you laughed with your cigarette resting against your cheek.
    â€œYou act like you’re thinking of living here.” You looked around the room, its damp walls, its broken windowpanes. Some pad.
    With both hands Javier removed the socks he had chosen to match his slacks and shirts. “This was quite a modern hotel ten years ago, I believe,” he said. “It has been eroded by all the unfortunate travelers forced to stop over, as we are, involuntarily.”
    That’s how he talks, Dragoness. Yes, that’s how your husband talks. You can bet all you have on it. You ask him. “When will the car be ready?” simply to hear him reply, very subtly, “You should ask Franz.” He presses his socks to his chest while you exhale smoke.
    â€œBut really, why put your things in the drawers when we’ll be here only one night?”
    He carried his socks to the dresser as if they were a dozen fragile eggs.
    â€œOne night, one month, the principle is the same. We should take advantage of what time we have.”
    â€œAdvantage?” You curled up in the bed, resting on your elbows. “In this miserable dump of a town?”
    Javier arranged his socks all in a row in the top drawer. You began to laugh. You drew your legs up again