Mate: a word from Old French meaning to overpower or overcome.
Saturday, October 12th
Sam drove me back to her place in a white Sunbeam Alpine. The flat was tidied and the small rug upon which the wine had spilled had been taken away for cleaning. She clattered around in the kitchen and I could hear the whirr of an electric can-opener. I wandered into Samantha’s bedroom. The dressing-table was crowded with pint-size bottles of Lanvin, Millot and Givenchy, torn pieces of cotton wool, gold hair-brushes, cleansing cream, half a cup of cold coffee, witch hazel, skin food, hand lotion, roll-on deodorant, scissors, tweezers, six different nail polishes, seven bright bottles of eye make-up from green to mauve, a capsule containing silver paint and a large bowl full of beads and bracelets. In a silver frame there was a photo of a blond man in very small knitted swimming-trunks. I picked up the frame. The photo was a little too small and slid down to reveal the top of another man’s head. The photo underneath was a studio portrait, well lit and carefully printed; it leaned into the frame at a forty-five-degree angle, like film stars like to lean. In bold loopy writing it said: ‘To Samantha with immortal love. Johnnie Vulkan.’
Long, slim hands gripped my chest from behind and I felt the soft, fragrant shapes of Sam press herself tightly against me.
‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ she said.
‘Looking at photos of your lovers,’ I said.
‘Poor Johnnie Vulkan,’ she said. ‘He’s still madly in love with me. Does it make you insanely jealous?’
‘Insanely,’ I said.
We stood there very close, watching our reflection in the dressing-table mirror.
On the bed there was a selection of toys. There was a huge moth-eaten teddy bear, a black velvet cat with a damaged ear and a small cross-eyed alligator.
‘Aren’t you getting a little too old for cuddly toys?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said.
I said, ‘Who needs cuddly toys?’
‘Don’t do that,’ she said then, ‘men use women as cuddly toys, women use babies as cuddly toys and babies use cuddly toys as cuddly toys.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Now now,’ said Sam and ran a finger-nail up my spine muscle. Her voice became a whisper. ‘There are four stages of a love affair. First there is the stage of being in love and liking it.’ Her voice was muffled by my shoulder. ‘That’s this stage.’
‘How long’s is likely to last?’
‘Not long enough,’ said Sam. ‘The other stages soon follow.’
‘What stages?’ I said.
‘There’s being in love and not liking it,’ said Sam. ‘That’s the second one. Then there is not being in love and not liking that. And finally there is not being in love and liking that – you are over it then – cured.’
‘Sounds great,’ I said.
‘You have to be make-believe tough,’ Samantha said. ‘I’m serious and it makes me sort of sad. If people in love synchronized their movements through those stages …’ She snuggled deeper into my shoulder. ‘We’ll stay at the first stage for ever. No matter what calls us away, we’ll stay up here on the moon. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘No. I’m serious.’
‘Looks like we’re first here on the moon,’ I said.
Sam said, ‘Just think of all those poor dopes down on earth who can’t see that great sun.’
‘It’s really frying us,’ I said.
‘Stay still,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t do that. I have a can of corn on the stove; it will burn.’
‘Corn,’ I said, ‘is expendable.’