Brazzaville Beach Read Free Page B

“You’re incorrigible.” He raised his glass to me. “To Hope, our very own tonic.”
    WHAT I LIKE TO DO
    What I like to do with him is this. We are lying in bed, it doesn’t matter when, at night or in the morning, but he is warm and drowsy, half asleep, and I am awake. I lie close to him, my breasts flattened against his back, his buttocks pressed against my thighs, my knees fitting his knee backs, his heels on my insteps .
    Without much ado I slide my hand over his hip and hold him, very gently. His penis is soft and flaccid. So light in my palm. Light as a coin—a weight, a presence merely, but that is all. For a while nothing happens. Then the warmth of my cradling fingers slowly makes him grow. That fleshy inflation, the warmth now transferring back to me with the exothermic flush of blood irrigating the muscle tissue. This power I have, this magic transformation that my touch effects, never fails to excite me. Engorged, thickening, veined like a leaf, it slowly pushes through the loose cage of my fingers, and he turns to face me .
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    Hope Dunbar had heard people talking about John Clearwater in college for some time before she met him.
    Clearwater.
    The name stuck in her head. Clearwater…she recognized its recurrence in conversations several times without taking in its context.
    â€œWho is this Clearwater everyone’s talking about?” she asked her supervisor, Professor Hobbes.
    â€œJohn Clearwater?”
    â€œI don’t know. I just keep hearing the name.”
    â€œHe’s the new research fellow, isn’t he? I think that’s the one.”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIncredibly brilliant man, that sort of thing. Or so they say. But then they always say that. I’m sure we’ve all been ‘incredibly brilliant’ in our time.” He paused. “What about him?”
    â€œNothing. Just curious about the name.”
    John Clearwater.
    A few days later she saw a man in her street with a folded newspaper in his hand looking up at the houses. He wore a gabardine raincoat and a red baseball hat. He looked up at the facades of the terraced houses curiously, as if he were thinking of buying them, then he turned away.
    Hope had rounded the corner off the Old Brompton Road and he was headed in the opposite direction, so she never managed a proper look at him. It was the conjunction of the raincoat and the baseball hat that made him singular in some way. The thought came to her, unbidden, that this man might have been John Clearwater.
    Two days after this encounter she was walking along an unfamiliar corridor in the college (she had been up to the computing department to collect a printout for Professor Hobbes) when she passed a door that was open by about six inches. The name on it was DR. J. L. CLEARWATER . She stopped and peered in. From where she was standing she could see a corner of vermilion college-issue carpet and a bare wall with cellophane-tape scars.
    For some reason, and with untypical presumption, she took a step forward and pushed the door wide.
    The room was empty. Clouds in the sky shifted and the spring sunshine suddenly painted a yellow window on the wall. Dust motes still moved, unsettled recently.
    On the floor were a dozen cardboard boxes filled with books. The desk was clear. She went round it and opened two drawers. A chain of paper clips. An olive green paper puncher. Three boiled sweets. She searched the other drawers. Empty. A tension and baffled excitement was beginning to quicken inside her. What was she doing in this man’s room? What was she playing at?
    On the soft chair in the corner was a coat. A woolen coat, charcoal-gray herringbone. Then on the mantelpiece above the gas fire she saw a mug of coffee.
    Steaming.
    She touched it. Hot.
    Her mouth was dry now as she picked up the coat and went through the pockets. A pair of sheepskin gloves. A small plastic bottle of pills marked Tylenol. Some