her hands together prayerlike, pleased. ‘Suppose we say I’ve put in my own bid for Dante. Say I’m ready to move up to directing. Let’s not plead good intentions for the moment. I’m as ambitious as you are. You’ve only directed one major piece. Badly. I can put in my own bid for Rolfa Patel’s opera. And I’ll be more willing to shorten it. Cut it a bit. Like you did to
For just a moment, Milena felt fear. It almost made sense. No. Hold on. I have the approval.
‘The approval,’ said Thrawn, as if reading her mind, ‘has been given for the opera’s good social effects. I could get those same effects in shorter time, less expense. Think about it. You try to cut me out, I cut you out.’
That is delusion, Milena repeated to herself. She has no lead. No one will work with her, they gave her to me as a last resort. What if it’s worked too well? What if they’ve forgotten how she was before? Then they are fools, and will deserve what they get. And I will keep fighting to do it well.
‘Go ahead,’ said Milena. ‘Try it. Say I have the same idea as Milena Shibush, only I’ll do it cheaper and nastier. More giant crabs, more badly imagined dragons. Give me the largest theatrical production that anyone can remember as my first job.’
Those delicious rehearsed lines, lumbering into place like old-fashioned scenery. Then feeling overcame Milena. ‘This is all so boring, Thrawn. You are all so boring. Why do I have to jump through these hoops, just for you.’
‘Because,’ said Thrawn, in a little-girl voice acrid with sarcasm. ‘You owe me something.’
‘I don’t owe you anything.’
‘What about your first success?’
Let me out. Let me breathe.
‘Poor little Milena,’ chuckled Thrawn, and shook her head. ‘Always afraid.’
She came close. Milena could smell her breath, feel her breasts against her.
‘I warned you,’ said Thrawn. ‘I told you that you would hate me.’
Milena could feel the nipples through the shirt. Thrawn’s nose brushed against her forehead, against her hair. Not this again, I am very tired of this too. Milena pushed her back, pushed her away.
‘I could tell them, Milena. I could, of course, tell them about us. About our little peccadilloes, eh? And maybe ask a few questions about you and Rolfa. I wonder if they’d like your opera as much if they knew it was a monument to bad grammar?’
Let her have it, thought Milena.
‘I already told them that, Thrawn. They already know, and they don’t seem to care. So go ahead and tell them, my girl, go ahead, and I will tell them how you took the light out my eyes and threatened to burn out my retina. I will remind them that you somehow escaped your Reading.’ They will whip you in so fast that you will puke with giddiness. You try that, Thrawn, and I will use the Consensus to squash you flatter than a fly.’ Thrawn was right. Milena hated her. Milena had not known that.
Thrawn looked shocked. Then she giggled. She tore the quilt off Milena’s bed. She pushed it into the sink into the bowl of chicken-pink water.
‘God damn it!’ squawked Milena, and hauled it out, stained and wet.
Hatred gave Milena words. ‘You are firmly ditched, Thrawn. Ditched. The production goes ahead, without you.’
‘I’ll just keep it up,’ said Thrawn, with a false girlishness. She spun around. ‘I’ll just keep coming and coming until you give in.’
People commit murder in circumstances like this.
‘You keep coming, Thrawn. You see what good it does you. You will get nothing out of me, Thrawn, nothing ever again. You’re right. I do hate you.’
‘Then,’ she said, like some horrible sort of doll. ‘I’ve won.’
‘Yeah. Guess so,’ said Milena. ‘Happy birthday, or whatever.’
Thrawn launched herself onto Milena’s bed. Her smile seemed to say, anything that is yours, I will take over.
I really do feel like killing you, Milena thought. It really would be the simplest thing to take the kitchen knife that is behind me and cut you up and wrap you in the god-damned quilt and dump you in the river. Is that what you mean by victory?
Milena felt queasy, sick. I want to get away, from all of this. She wanted to hide her face, she wanted to weep, but she couldn’t, not in front of Thrawn. And she saw Thrawn’s face, saw its flatness. Thrawn knew what Milena had been thinking, Milena saw her face watching and waiting — hoping? The face wants me to pull that knife. Then she will scream and call people and destroy me. Or she would let me kill her and destroy me. I need a lock. I am fed up people coming into my room. I need a lock, and I need to get this woman Read, get her blasted full of virus.
‘We’re both crazy,’ said Thrawn. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go hand in hand to the Reading rooms? They could cure us both.’ It was a plea. She really meant it. ‘You see,’ Thrawn said. ‘If we don’t, something terrible is going to happen. I don’t know quite what. But I do know I can’t let you do this to me. I know that I am pretty clever. I think I’d have to destroy you. I get obsessed by things, Milena. I wouldn’t stop.’
It sounded pretty much like the truth. Milena found she was steeled for it. ‘You don’t scare me, Thrawn. Except for nuisance value, you have no hold over me. My career? I don’t care that much about my career. This room? Not even this room. You don’t know what I care about.’
And Milena turned and left. It was very simple. She just turned around and walked away from it. Thrawn would do something to the contents. Snip off all the sleeves from my shirts, pull up the herbs in my window-box, what else could she do? Set it on fire? Good, burn the building down, Thrawn. That will really get you on the production. They are going to send me into outer space, Thrawn. I will be where you can do nothing to me. Space for three or four months. Can’t touch me there, Thrawn. You can’t touch me at all. And no one else will need you, and no one else will want you.
But there was a leadenness in Milena’s feet and in her mind as she trudged down the stairs. Everything was weary. It was a leadenness that Milena remembering knew well. I wonder if that’s when it began? When I let it in? We destroyed each other Thrawn. No one is invulnerable. No one is immune.
And Milena remembered singing in her own wan, flat little voice.
The sky above was still fierce and blue and flawless, and from all around the horizon, there came a murmuring of song. The streets and yards were empty; it was high, hot noon and everyone was sleeping in the shade. It had been a beautiful summer. No rain for weeks. Already the air was beginning to smell of the urine of animals.
There was a stall, its battered, turquoise shutters closed. Underneath it, out of the sun, a family squatted. The mother with a straw hat and her hair in pigtails smoked a pipe. She rocked on her haunches, singing aimlessly a dawdle of song. The children were naked under blankets, and dirty. The old London, thought Milena the director. It’s going.
Then she looked up and saw the sign: a man falling on his face.
The Spread-Eagle, thought the Milena who remembered. Is this before or after I left the Shell? It was about then that I found the Spread again.
The pub was dark inside, and empty too, empty at lunchtime. It was too hot to swarm together in airless pubs. The floor was bare of nutshells, though the tables were still ring-stained. In the corner, someone was sitting. Milena couldn’t quite see her, because of the shadows, because of the dirt. Then the face looked up, pale and lumpy and forlorn.
‘Lucy,’ Milena the director said. ‘Hello. Remember me?’
Lucy was wearing the same coat as the last time, but it was an uneven black and grey now. The old woman looked up. ‘What?’ she croaked. She was crying. Her cheeks were smeared with the tears of the very old, tears that seem to have melted into the face, as if the eyes themselves had melted.
Oh no, thought Milena. The face was devastated.
‘Can I buy you a drink, love?’ Milena asked. Now she had money. Now she could offer.
