Fussily he lay thinking, thinking something about her. If she spoke again, he thought, he’d show her. He’d lie there till she spoke again and when she spoke he’d ignore her and lie still some more.
He waited.
Well, if she wasn’t going to speak again, he couldn’t ignore her, could he?
He opened his eyes. They blazed, round and angry. She sat near the foot of the bed. Her body was still, her face was still, her mouth and her eyes were alive.
He coughed suddenly, violently. It closed his eyes and when he opened them he was no longer looking at her. He fumbled vaguely at his chest, then looked down at himself.
‘Slep’ in my clothes all night,’ he said.
‘Drink your coffee.’
He looked at her. She still had not moved, and did not. She was wearing a burgundy jacket with a grey-green scarf. She had long, level, grey-green eyes, the kind which in profile are deep clear triangles. He looked away from her, farther and farther away, until he saw the coffee. A big pot, a thick hot cup, already poured. Black and strong and good. ‘Whoo,’ he said, holding it, smelling it. He drank. ‘Whoo.’
He looked at the sunlight now. Good. The turn and fall and turn again of the breeze-lifted marquisette at the window, in and out of a sunbeam. Good. The luminous oval, a shadow of the sunlight itself, where the sun glanced off the round mirror on one wall to the clean paint on the adjoining one. Good. He drank more good coffee.
He set the cup down and fumbled at his shirt buttons. He was wrinkled and sweaty. ‘Shower,’ he said.