Lizards: Short Story Read Free Page A

this sweater with its psychotic-looking parrots all over it.
    “I guess I’m just one of those people who are haunted by the gory details,” Marion says.
    “Yes, I know,” Emma says soothingly. “I am, too.” And she sees that there really is this difference between Karl and Marion, and between Karl and herself. Karl can laugh at what haunts him. She and Marion don’t laugh.
    There is something Emma can’t stop thinking about.
    Nicky was eleven months old. She was about to poke her finger in the new kitten’s eye when Emma grabbed her hand and slapped it, something she’d never done before, and Nicky, after looking at Emma with more astonishment than Emma would have thought a baby was capable of summoning, slapped her own hand. Afterwards, almost every time she crawled near one of the cats, she would bring her finger close to its face, then pull her hand away and slap herself.
    Sometimes this memory strikes Emma as a message from Nicky, Nicky telling her that the way to cope with the biggest shock of your life is to replay it until it becomes commonplace. Which is what Emma supposes she is doing, indirectly, whenever she reads supermarket tabloids or pumps Karl and Marion for the worst possible story, for the story that will reduce her own story to the status of contender.
3
    She was still mourning Paul Butt, still sobbing in the washroom at the investment house where she worked as a typist, still toying with the idea of going to another clinic for more electrolysis, when Gerry came over to her desk wearing red track shorts and a shirt and tie, his suit pants draped over his arm.
    “Emma,” he said, reading the name plate on her desk. He’d only been at the firm a week, and this was the first time he’d spoken to her.
    “Gerry,” she said.
    “Listen,” he said, “I was wondering if you had a needle and thread. I’ve split a seam.”
    “Sure,” she said sarcastically, opening her desk drawer, “I’ve got an ironing board, pots and pans, diapers …”
    He looked as if she’d slapped him. “I’m only asking becauseI saw you mending something a few days ago,” he said. “Your skirt—”
    His eyes, she saw for the first time, were different colours—the left one blue, the right one gold. They were as round as coins and red-rimmed, almost as if he had on red eyeliner.
    “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.” She caught him doing a fast skim of her body, and it came to her, like an illicit jackpot, that it wouldn’t take much to win his life-long adoration. She found her matchbook needle-and-thread kit and held out her hand for the pants. “I’ll do it,” she said.
    “No, that’s okay,” he said, shaking the hair out of his eyes. His hair was white-blond and very fine. Whenever he was on the phone he ran his fingers through it. Emma had watched him doing this. Her desk was to the left and slightly behind his, in the big room where all the brokers and typists sat, and she had watched him, not as prospective boyfriend material (she thought she was too heartbroken for that) but because he moved so enthusiastically, banging out phone numbers, racing his buys and sells to the order desk, and because he combed his fingers through his hair as though there was nothing like the feel of it.
    “I’ll probably do a better job than you,” she said, coming to her feet. Then, before he could say anything else, she pulled the pants off his arm and headed for one of the empty boardrooms. “Won’t take a minute,” she called over her shoulder.
    In the boardroom she lay the pants on the table. They were navy with red pinstripes. She was impressed by the creases in the legs. You could cut a tomato with that, she thought, running a finger along one of them. Her finger was not steady. What was the matter with her? she wondered. Why had she brought the pants in here? She could have sewn them at her desk. She held up her hand and tried to see if she could keep it from trembling. She couldn’t. She investigated her