“Maybe Iwill,” says Clemence, something catching in her throat, or thereabouts, and then she rushes out of the shop before she starts sneezing again and makes an even bigger fool of herself than she has already.
Six
Clemence goes home with books clutched to her chest, and a third of the way up her second set of stairs, she’s stopped by a pair of denim-clad legs topped with the most terrific rear end she’s ever seen. Clemence is not normally a butt-marveller, but this one is right at eye level, though whomever it belongs to is doubled over and struggling to breathe.
“Are you okay?” she calls up. Could this be a heart attack? Clemence feels her own heartbeat speeding up, though whether its due to panic or attraction she cannot discern.
But it’s probably the latter, for that butt belongs to Charles, the landlady’s son. Charles, whose existence Clemence had been wondering if she’d only imagined, with a derrière she’d taken no note of at all at their first encounter, so focused had she been upon the fineness of his upper body. Where has he been all her life? Or at least lately …
Charles, fortunately, does not seem to be having a heart attack at all, has simply been burdened with a heavy load and now he’s taking a necessary breather halfway up the stairs. He’s practically panting. “I’m fine,” he’s answered her. “Really. Just needed to put this down for a minute.” It’s steamy in the stairwell. There’s a filthy window at the top letting in dim light, but you’d need a ladder to climb up and open it. Or to clean it.
Clemence asks Charles what he’s hauling.
“An A/C,” he says. He’s caught his breath, and picks it back up again, muscles flexed, now carrying it all the way up to the top.
Clemence hurries up behind him, pulling out her key. “I’ll get the door.” Angling around him delicately, difficult with an armful of books. His T-shirt is wet, and no doubt she’s sweating, too. She unlocks the door and he uses his hip to nudge it open, bringing the air conditioner inside. It’s on little wheels, so portable, supposedly, except that it weighs a ton. “Are you okay,really?” she asks, dropping her books to the floor. Charles’s face is red and he is twisting his remarkable body with a grimace as though his back is strained.
“Alot of stairs,” he says.
“Ididn’t order an air conditioner,” says Clemence.
“You didn’t?” He gives her a withering look. “Oh, well, I’ll carry it all the way back down then. Must have got the wrong address.”
“Ididn’t meanthat,” she says. Charles is touchy. “Imean, thank you. Obviously. Ijust don’t understand …”
“My mom,” says Charles.
He’s still sweating and now his face has gone a funny colour. “Oh my gosh,” Clemence says. “Ishould get you a glass of water.” She has become unaccustomed to hospitality, and the only available drinking vessel is a giant plastic beer stein. On the side is a cartoon of a huge-breasted woman, her words in a speech bubble:I’ve got no time for small talk. Your place or mine?Inappropriate, perhaps, but it had come with the apartment, so Clemence takes no responsibility, telling Charles as much as she hands him the glass.
He gulps the water down. “Thank you,” he breathes.
She gestures toward the air conditioner. “You really didn’t have to.” The appliance is bigger than her fridge.
He shrugs. “My mom insisted. It’s hot up here.”
“And I’m a girl.”
“That’s part of it.” He smiles. “She means well, my mom. She’s a bit hard to take. But Ithink she thinks that with a girl, you have to worry more.”
“We should probably tell her that I’m thirty-three years old.”
“It won’t make a difference,” he says. “I’m almost forty and she still makes me soup.”
“And you’re not even a girl.”
“It’s how she shows she cares,” says Charles. He puts the glass down on the counter, and then pulls the air conditioner over to the small window in the corner. “Andthisis how she shows she cares.” He starts pulling out the tube that will fasten to the window, setting up the entire arrangement. “Good thing, too,” he says. “It’s sweltering.”
“So you grew up here?” Clemence asks him while he works, and he murmurs an affirmative.
“We lived in the basement,” he explains as he places the panel in the window frame. “Didn’t need an A/C down there—it was always freezing. And my parents rented out the rest of the house.”
“Your dad?”
“He died when Iwas seven,” says Charles. “Lung cancer. And my mom’s been running the show ever since.” He is bending over again, plugging in the air conditioner, and Clemence can’t stop staring at his body, and then feeling guilty for objectifying him, because he seems like a nice guy and he has just delivered her an appliance. “There we go,” he says. The tube fits into a panel that sits neatly in her window, and they’re all set. He presses the On switch, and the machine begins its roar—followed by the blast of an explosion, and then silence. The fridge cuts out. Somebody downstairs is yelling, “What the hell?”
“You blew a fuse,” says Clemence, figuring it out.
Charles finds her input unhelpful. “You think?” He disappears downstairs again, presumably into the basement where the fuse box is.
