The Idea of Perfection Read Free

the hall would be like: the cream tiles, the unsympathetic fluorescent lights, the green stains under the tap, the cistern that trickled, the shower with the water saver so you hardly got wet.
    There was a drought on. He sympathised. Just the same, a decent shower was a comfort in the heat.
    Another sort of man, he knew, would be able to make the best of the Caledonian. Another sort of man would nip down to the public bar for a beer, where it would be cooler. He would read the paper, watch the trots on the telly. Would get a conversation going with the man next to him at the bar about the way the country was going to the pack.
    He wished he could be such a man.
    He got up from the bed. The structure groaned and a spring twanged as if in mockery.
     
     
    Harley had seen him looking, the man holding back the curtain, with the D of the word CALEDONIAN hanging upside-down from a screw above his head. She had seen him drop the curtain and move back from the window, but she knew he was still there, perhaps still watching her, as this dog was that had appeared from nowhere.
    She had forgotten how empty a country town could be, how blank-windowed, how you could feel looked-at and large.
    As she watched, a woman appeared from somewhere and hesitated on the edge of the footpath, looking up and down Parnassus Road as if a stranger like herself. When she glanced along and saw Harley watching she swapped the basket quickly from one hand to the other, pushed her hair behind her ear, and swiftly, purposefully, crossed the road towards Alfred Chang Superior Meats, in deep shadow under its awning. Harley heard the ping of the bell as she pushed the fly-door open and the slap as it closed. Then it was all silent again.
    She wondered if she had imagined the woman with the basket.
    Further down the street past the Caledonian she could see the old picture theatre. You could tell what it had been from its shape, tall at the front and falling away steeply at the back. The brackets were still screwed on down the front of the building where the sign must have been, Odeon or Starlight. Now the whole lot was painted utility grey.
    There was a piece of masonite screwed up on the wall, with a sign, hand-lettered, hard to read. She squinted towards it. COBWEBBE CRAFTE SHOPPE, she read. OPEN WED & THUR, and beside it another one left over from the previous month, with a corner broken off, MERRY XMAS PEACE ON EAR.
    She laughed without meaning to and the dog barked. Then it stopped as if to let her have a turn.
    Get lost, she said.
    Its tail began to swing from side to side. Opening its mouth it panted with its tongue hanging out, pulsing. It went on watching her closely, as if she was about to perform a magic trick.
    It showed no sign of being about to get lost.
    The Cobwebbe Crafte Shoppe still had the old ticket window from the picture theatre, and through the glass she could see two quilts competing like plants for the light.
    She glanced back at her car. It was not too late to get back in and drive away. No one would know, except this dog, and someone behind a curtain. As she stood hesitating, a rooster crowed lingeringly from somewhere, and a distant car horn went dah diddidy dah-dah. Then the silence pressed back in over the sounds.
    She straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat.
    Get lost, she told the dog again.
    It sounded loud and rude in so much quiet.
    The dog watched her as she looked right, looked left, looked right again. Nothing at all was moving anywhere along Parnassus Road. It was just her and her shadow, and the dog and the shadow of the dog, as they crossed the road together. Under the awning of the Caledonian their shadows were swallowed in the larger shadow.
    Looking along at the Cobwebbe Crafte Shoppe, not at where she was going, she walked straight into a man coming out of the doorway of the Caledonian. When they collided, he staggered backwards and nearly fell. She grabbed at a handful of his forearm, clutching at the