“Of course, you do.” It is a miracle that Toby is alive, and that he didn’t expire when he came inside her, and now she’s imagining how that would have panned out. What Mrs. Yeung would have thought of the drama, and what a burden to carry a body, however slight, down all those stairs. It’s such curious, angular body, too. She admires it the way she’d admire an abstract sculpture—it’sinteresting. Toby has beautiful pink nipples, the colour of his lips, and she can’t help kissing them. And he’s kissing her hair, and this is the good part, the two of them more comfortable naked than they’ve ever been with clothes on, which should probably be the rule.
“Ilike the way,” he tells her, with his face buried in her hair, “that you aren’t preoccupied with defining whatthisis.”
“This?” She lets his nipple go. She hasn’t been preoccupied, but only because it hadn’t occurred to her. Yet. She might even never have been preoccupied at all, but it bothered her now that preoccupation seemed clearly out of bounds.
“Us,” Toby clarifies.
And Clemence looks up, resting her chin on her hand. “So there’s an us?” she asks. After all, he started it.
“Well, no,” he tells her. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“And you like that?”
“Kind of?” Toby’s not perceptive, but he knows he’s misstepped. He’s tentative now, has lost his ease. He tries to explain. “Sometimes Ifeel like maybe I’m dreaming. See, here’s how it is. This beautiful woman walks intomy life, and she kisses me, and she keeps kissing me.” He stops, and suddenly looks concerned. “Crampton’s not paying you for this, is she?”
Clemence tells him no, she’s off the clock. This is strictly voluntary.
“It’s not usually so easy for me, believe it or not,” he says. Oh, Clemence can believe it. “Frankly, it’s been a while, and people were saying that since Ispend all my time in an antiquarian bookshop and my closest companion is in her eighties, it was probably going to be a while more. But there you were, and we just had sex, and you don’t seem to want to tie me down.”
“You don’t want to be tied down?” asks Clemence.
“If you’re talking sexually, I’m definitely open to it,” he says. “But in terms of relationships, I’ve tried it, and Ijust don’t think that I’m that way inclined.”
“You’re not a one-woman man?” she asks him, wondering where he’s going with this. Surely Toby is not so spoiled for choice.
“Ithink I’m more a no-woman man,” he says. “I’m not good at these things. People get upset with me. It’s very disruptive. Ihate conflict because it gives me anxious diarrhea.”
“Toby.” She wants him to stop. “Nobodylikesconflict.”
“Some people do,” he insists. “The women who go out with me. And every time they tell me that with them it will be different. Now granted, I’m talking about a limited dataset. There haven’t been so many. But it never goes well. And Idon’t want that to happen with you. Because Ilike you too much.”
“That might be,” says Clemence, “the sweetest, strangest declaration of affection I’ve ever received from anyone.”
“You’re kind of sweet and strange yourself,” says Toby, and Clemence wants to melt into the moment entirely. Its perfection. There is no template for this, and no reason why it should work or make sense, but here in her lumpy daybed with Toby is precisely where she wants to be. She likes him, too. He’s totally weird, but it doesn’t even matter. Tracing her fingers along the curious red bumps along his upper arm, which she hasn’t noticed before, and they’re particularly enflamed, so it’s strange she hadn’t. Are they hives?
“What’s this?” she asks him.
And he sighs. “Do you, by any chance, happen to have a cat?”
Twenty-Three
So it went well,” she says to Jillian the following Friday as Jillian’s getting ready for another date with her husband. “Once the swelling went down.” His entire arm had blown up like a balloon, and Clemence was anxious about it, but Toby wasn’t bothered.
“These days, as long as it’s not anaphylactic,” he’d told her, “Ibarely even notice.” He’d gone home, though—he didn’t want to make it worse. Yes, he was allergic to cats, even part-time cats. He’s also allergic to gerbils and hamsters and rabbits, and probably dogs, but he’s never been close enough to one to find out. Toby hates dogs.
“He hates dogs?” Jillian is aghast. Jillian doesn’t have any pets because she doesn’t have time to clean up after them, but she’s on the board of a group that flies in rescues from South America.
And Clemence has to assure her that Toby likes dogs well enough as long as he doesn’t have to be around them,which seems fair, even though it’s a total lie. Because she doesn’t want Jillian to think Toby is a monster. She wants Jillian to tell her that all this is okay. She needs permission.
“Idon’t know,” says Jillian, who’s applying mascara before her vanity mirror. Jillian’s bedroom is four times the size of Clemence’s entire apartment. It’s only been renovated twice since they moved in, which means Jillian must be mildly satisfied with it. And no wonder. Everything is white—the wooden floors, the beams, the slanted ceiling. Jillian sleeps in an attic, too, like Clemence, but she has the rest of the house to go with it. Her bed seems bigger than king size. Her bed is an island, and Clemence is perched upon it cross-legged, watching her friend get ready. Their couples therapist had told them that the ritual is important. She says Jillian and Jeremy have to make an effort.
An effort for Jillian requires an hour of preparation, however, while Jeremy can appear as is. He’s downstairs now, feeding the children their dinner, but this gives Jillian and Clemence time to talk. Everybody wants to talk to Clemence now that they know she’s slept with the guy from the bookshop. Her first time with anyone since leaving Toad.
“Although the last time wasn’t with Toad,” Clemence clarifies. Everybody forgets the chronology.
“Oh yeah, the neighbours,” recalls Jillian. The most ill-advised escapade of Clemence’s lifetime, but she is free now. She is free to make all the bad decisions in the world, and nobody gets hurt.
“Nobody gets hurt, except maybeyou.” Jillian is holding two different earrings up to her face, trying to decide between them.
