Other Women by Evelyn Lau

Author:Evelyn Lau [Lau, Evelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36390-9
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 1996-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

7.

Fiona was watching a man across the room who reminded her of Raymond. He had grey hair and wore a black suit; the shoulders of his jacket were sharp as if they had been drawn with a triangle and the point of a new pencil.

The fund-raiser for the arts community was being held in a hotel ballroom downtown. It had a high transparent ceiling crossed with white beams; it was like being in a glass cave. Fashionably, the men wore whimsical cartoon ties; the women were outfitted in black dresses and retro shoes. A gallery owner Fiona disliked had turned up in an off-the-shoulder gown made of some shiny, heavy fabric; feathers sprouted from her hat and her opera-length gloves. She looked a little like an emu and kept intruding into the periphery of Fiona’s vision.

Fiona kissed the cheek of a photographer she had not seen for several months; the woman had become pregnant, and all evening kept one hand cupped against her belly. A young gay sculptor had pierced the corner of his mouth since Fiona had seen him two years ago, and a half-ring like a horn protruded there, a sliver of gold against his cheek.

“How are you?” she said, “how have you been?”

“Great,” he said. “You look fabulous.”

“You look great too,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s been two years.”

“Two years,” he marvelled. “A lot of bodies.”

She laughed. “It used to be like that for me, too.”

“But I’m single now,” he said. “Again.”

The man Fiona was watching had moved so that now he stood against a slab of rock that had a white silk flower stuck in one of its cracks. An artificial waterfall glittered next to him, water pouring down into a trough with spouts and drains at the bottom. Fiona excused herself and headed in his direction, nodding to people she recognized along the way.

Up close his resemblance to Raymond was even more pronounced—the prominent cheekbones, the taut, pale skin, his gaze which when he turned it upon her was cautious and in some basic way disinterested. It made her want to prove that she had no intention of injuring him, yet that at the same time she was fascinating enough to be worthy of his interest. This was what she had felt with Raymond. “I have only ever felt this safe with one other person,” Raymond had said, “and I married her.” But it was what was unsafe about Fiona that made her exciting—a pawn, she had sometimes thought, in his brief flirtation with self-destruction. The last time she had seen him, he looked better than he had a year before, when everyone was scrambling to save their businesses in the recession. In his long, loose jacket and slate linen trousers, he looked as if he had stepped off the runway at Calvin Klein. She knew as soon as he walked in the door that it would soon be over—whatever weakness in him that had made their affair possible had been recognized, analyzed and disposed of in executive fashion.

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