Are You Jealous (part eleven)

Are You Jealous

(part eleven)

Presby cast her a look of warm sympathy. The eyeglasses sketched encompassing circles. “We find desirable items from the interwar era,” he told Young. “Individuals, rather than starve, relinquished heirlooms.”

“It was a period of great poverty in Europe.”

“Factories unable to obtain capital. Whole inventories sold below cost.”

Gabriel, smote once by the suspicion that Presby had locked eyes with Eva on the word “desirable”, was struck again. Presby affected her like the chiming clock. Her face was the same.

“Gabe,” said Presby, acknowledging him.

“Klaus,” he answered, unthinking.

Presby stood up straighter. He put the eyeglasses on his nose, and scrutinized Gabriel, finding doubtful provenance.

Eva gave an exasperated snort. “He calls you that. He thinks it means something.”

“He dislikes me.”

Young said, “I’m sure we are all friends.”

“I am not sure,” said Presby, “that it is necessary for us all to be friends.”

“Gabriel doesn’t want to be anyone’s friend. He wants to sit there, rehearing his little comments. That is conversation between us. His job…but my job…” She cut off. “He won’t listen to me. I don’t think he knows me at all!”

All this, she said to Presby. She turned and met Gabriel’s eyes, her own welling. She walked to the glass and stood looking out, arms crossed. Gabriel saw Presby follow, raise an arm across her back, lightly rest fingers on her shoulder.

It was wrong.

And what had he not noticed, what did he not know? All she was willing to tell. All he had learned by watching her. The flare-ups and the restlessness. The talismanic objects from her childhood, her life before their marriage. However damaged, dirty, trivial, she would not part with any of them. She collaged them, sewed them, shadow-boxed them. She would do so until no trace of their power remained. He knew her fences and her intrusive intimacies. He knew he would feel bereft at the loss of them.

But he did not know if his love’s alteration were this folly of his own…

Or if she had bent towards the removing influence of Presby.

“You’re alone.”

A woman in a long beaded skirt and short-sleeved turtleneck, her greying hair mostly pinned up, touched his arm. “I’m Kuaia. Come with me.”

This expensive vintage fashion, this expressive disorganization, exemplified all that Eva struggled to put across.

“You’re a friend of Henderson’s,” Kuaia told Gabriel. “I will introduce you to the famous Young.” She leaned against his arm. “We love Henderson. We’re only teasing.”

11

Are You Jealous

Are You Jealous (part twelve)

(Stephanie Foster, 2016)