And jump they did. As the affair crystallized, Prudence added to the layers of torment a layer all of her own.
One morning, early, his ankle was vibrating when he woke from a deep post-Prudence sleep. Unable yet to open his eyes, he concentrated on the sensation, trying to identify it. Pins and needles? There was a weight on his foot, holding it down, and then he heard the sound that kept time with the vibration: purring. A cat was lying on his ankle. One of the street cats had got in, quite a heavy one by Omani standards, and it occurred to him that he would love to have a pet, especially a cat—so soothing, like this, first thing in the morning—and he hoped, as he raised his head, that it would be a pretty one.
He looked down at his feet. No cat.
Gabriel leaped into sitting and pushed himself against the bedstead.
The purring grew louder.
He jumped from the bed into the solid silence of his Muscati house. No cat, anywhere, and no purring, now, either. But the blue kaftan was on the floor. Prudence had left behind her only piece of clothing. That had never happened before. He picked it up and brushed chalky dust off its sleeve. She must have put on his clothes. He lurched toward the cupboard—he had only four shirts and two T-shirts—and counted those that were hanging: two short-sleeved shirts and the heavy one he would never wear made three; his T-shirts were chucked on the chair. Where was the other shirt? He pulled on shorts, went downstairs, and found it lying crumpled on the cushions where he and Prudence had pulled it off him the night before.
His heartbeat tripped into a run. What had she worn going out? He crumpled her kaftan in his fist, smelled it. Desire, fulfillment, abstraction. This woman was killing him. Unless, of course, that was the whole point.
He hated going to work, not because he was afraid to miss Prudence, as before, but because he was determined to catch her out. She would slip up. There was no magic in this; she was a woman in a dress. There was nothing ethereal about her breath on his face or the mess of sex. He had tried every which way to contain her. He locked the doors; she got out anyway. He locked them both in without food; it didn’t bother her; she could live without sustenance. It was his own hunger that drove him to the market, where he gorged on watermelon until he’d had his fill. In the house, he searched for trapdoors, hidden passages, amused by his role in this B-movie, and he spent hours watching her—a long woman on a long bench, flicking through a magazine. Jesus, he thought, does she know no boredom?
He loved her. In spite of everything, she had become the skin on his skin, the eyes in his eyes, the heart in his heart. Yet he had to hold firm. Reason was making too many compromises and skepticism taking too many hits. He had to bring Prudence from the closed world they inhabited and out into the day. How lovely it would be to walk together on the Corniche, to see the sunlight on her hair and speak of normal things, because as long as they did not live like others, and among others, they had nothing on which to build their relationship, because he too had become an empty thing, with little to say and no comment to make. There was no air in their cell and yet she would not quit it—not with him, at any rate.
He decided to follow her: to leave the house ahead of her, lurk in a doorway and keep one firm eye on his own front door. She moved quickly; she could zip past him in such a swish that he would have to be sharp, wily. It brought a vile taste to his mouth. Spying on his own lover would break even the wishy-washy rules of their game, whereby Prudence could toy with him all she liked, offering in return sexual ecstasy and a nibble on the carrot of love.
Nonetheless, he would follow her when she left the house, tail her through the suq and when, as expected, she hailed a cab on the Corniche, he would catch up and confront her. He would be careful not to frighten her—harm was something he would never do again—but he would demand the truth. Other truths, meanwhile, were thwarting the plan: Prudence had no cash for a cab and she wasn’t taking his, so either someone was collecting her nearby or she didn’t need wheels where she was going. Good. He would either follow her all the way to her destination or, at the very least, get a car’s license-plate number.
There was an alcove along the alley—the entrance to another house, which, to his knowledge, was empty. He chose this as his spot and picked the moment to slip out, one afternoon when Prudence was lying on the cushioned bench against the wall. For an hour he stood in the shade, his eyes on his door until his sight started shimmering. Eyes are like fish: they need to move. His neighbor passed, gave him a look, but in the absence of a mutual language, nothing could be said. It was hot, breathless. No breeze came in from the coast, no air. Only the heat, radiating off the ground, frying his concentration and his eyeballs.
Ninety minutes into his vigil, Prudence had yet to emerge. Trust me, he thought, to try this on the one day she decides not to leave. His lids wanted to close. The soles of his feet burned through his sandals. His throat was parched. Should have brought water. . . . Young
