The Engagement by Hooper Chloe

Author:Hooper, Chloe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Dear Mr. Colquhoun,

A few weeks ago, I was driving when I saw you outside a block of flats in the Docklands with someone calling herself Liese Campbell.

The wise man says, “Beware the unknown woman, she is like a river whose twistings you do not understand.” He means, you will be dragged under by her, as I was. I had dealings with her back in ­England and was pulled down all the way. At first I took Liese for a sweet young lady who had fallen into a bad habit. I tried to be a true friend, and encourage changes to her career path. All week, when I was not with her, I thought of ways to help her, and ways to satisfy her needs.

But Miss Campbell is a deceitful woman (deceiving no one as thoroughly as herself). By taking payment for her favors she can say, “Oh, I don’t really want it (i.e., to mount thousands of different men). It is just a job.” Yet it is not just a job. Whoring is her way of controlling her own constant, sick desire, pretending to herself she is not a NYMPHOMANIAC.

Only her price tag stops the rutting. She wants it all the time, but money keeps you, and all the others, at a safe distance. Hand her all you have and the one thing she gives back she’s really taking. Not one true word or feeling will come from her lips because how can someone who’s frozen inside make what passes for a heart feel love? She takes you for a fool—and every time you give her money you confirm it. Behind your back, she is laughing.

Yours,

A Friend

I stared at the page: trying to take in its claims, my brain rebelled. The words would not crawl toward sense, the sentences turn to thoughts. I’d told no one I was meeting Alexander, let alone taking his money, and obviously I’d never done such a thing before. So how, and why, and who? On the top corner of the page was a perfect thumbprint of light red blood: the illiterate’s signature—and I knew. I knew with a kind of physical certainty that he had sat at the keyboard in his study and slowly picked off these lies. The pious tone was his alone. Alexander had put this letter in an envelope, addressed it, then mailed it to himself.

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

“So it’s true,” he said slowly, his voice catching. “Everything in your reaction tells me it is true.”

I reached for a kitchen chair, needing to conserve my energy for thought.

I could not exist for him except as something to despise, so he’d invented evidence that made me despicable. This was like feeling a cocoon form—each silk thread another of his fantasies—while I was being wrapped inside.

“You can see,” he said defiantly, “why I would be upset?”

“Yes. It’s confronting.”

“Confronting?” he repeated sarcastically. All the restraint in his body was now gone; limbs uncoiling, he bent and took the letter from my hands, waving it in my face.

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