The Map of Love Read Free Page B

Isabel. ‘Imminent.’
    ‘OK. Call me. We’ll talk.’
    He turns back. ‘Are you OK getting home? Can we drop you off somewhere?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Isabel says. ‘I’m on the other side of the Park. I have a cab arranged.’
    The sky throws back the lights of the city, into her windows and who knows how many others. Isabel kicks off her shoes and stands looking out over the massed treetops below. If she were to open the window and lean out she would see, beyond the darkness, the lights of the Plaza and then down to Fifth Avenue where — is it her imagination or can she see a glow where Tiffany’s windows are? Tempted to open the window, she puts her hand on the catch, but it is a freezing February night and she turns back to the room and switches on one table lamp. Two years on, she is still enthralled by the freedom of not beinghalf of a couple, by the pleasure of coming home to silence, by not having to feel relieved if Irving has enjoyed the evening or to make it up to him if he hasn’t — by the absence of resentment in her life.
    It is after midnight and yet she is full of energy. She crosses over to the desk and checks her answering machine. Nothing. And nothing on the computer or the fax. She goes to a bookshelf and picks out
Who’s Who:
    Ghamrawi, Omar A. s of Ahmad al-Ghamrawi and Maryam,
née
al-Khalidi;
b
15 September 1942, Jerusalem; educ Cornell Univ New York and … coached by … 
Career
pianist, conductor and writer; debut with NY Philharmonic 1960 … tours … 
The Politics of Culture
1992,
A State of Terror
1994,
Borders and Refuge
1996 …
    Thirty-seven years of music, and five years of words. And it is in these last five years that he has hit the news. In her bedroom, she flicks the television on and catches Jerry Springer, pointing, haranguing,
‘You
had his baby — you
deliberately
entrapped him —’ A fat woman with mascara running down her face along with her tears yells back, ‘He needs to get
real —’
Isabel hits the mute button, goes into the bathroom and turns on the taps.
    Hair caught at the top of her head with a giant black butterfly clip, a rolled-up towel wedged behind her neck, the water pale green pools shimmering amid soft hills of foam, she slings her legs over the edge of the tub, lets her arms float and settles into this, her favourite position. The automatic thought comes that it would be nice to have some music but she pushes it aside. How many times has she put on a disc only to be irritated by it after a few minutes? And then she’d have to pad out on wet feet and switch it off before it drove her crazy. She couldn’t do it with the remote because of the position of the player in the bedroom. No, she would settle into the silence, and when it needed to be broken she would shift apart of herself and the soft lapping of the water would give her the sound she needed to hear.
    Would tomorrow be too soon to call him?
    Pharaonic toes, Irving used to say, when he was still talking about her toes — about her. Long, straight, even toes that could belong to any one of those sideways figures in the reliefs and the wall paintings, except hers were pale, not brown. She spreads them and frowns to focus on the neat, square-cut nails with their one coat of white pearl. Not chipped; good for another two or three days maybe. And besides it’s winter now and who’s going to see them? She lets her leg fall and slips further down into the water. Toes to go with the name. It was her father who had explained to her her name. Isa Bella: Isis the Beautiful. ‘So you see,’ he’d said, that summer’s day, in the woods back of the house in Connecticut, ‘you have the name of the first goddess, the mother of Diana, of all goddesses, the mother of the world.’ She had been walking at his side, carrying a long stick with a fork at the end, engaged in a divine task: holding it out, waiting for it to tremble, to tell her she had found water, there under the grass-covered