Rohan Quine - The Imagination Thief by Rohan Quine

Author:Rohan Quine [Quine, Rohan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2012-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

58 How Shigem met Kim

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Kim and I have now filled up a couple of boxes with books. “By the way,” I ask, “did you ever find any binoculars here?”

Returning to the room from the kitchen, Shigem hears my question. “I know what you’re thinking of,” he says. “Pippa’s little mystery friend. Yeah, that freaked me out! I don’t have binoculars, but a friend of mine has a pair of antique opera-glasses that’ll work. She’s back in Asbury on Thursday, so I’ll get them from her then. Looking through them at night, though—I think I’ll leave that to Kim.”

“How well d’you know Pippa?” I ask.

“I’ve seen her around for years. Sometimes we’ve said hi. I’ve always felt kind of sorry for her. She seems so alone, and ever since she was a teenager those big green eyes of hers have always looked like they were just crying. I never saw her apartment till the other night. It was a bit creepy in there, didn’t you think?”

“Yes,” says Alaia. “The space was all wrong, somehow. Can I pack anything else?”

Shigem looks around, considering this. While he does so, I have an interesting idea … and as you stand in thought, Shigem, I take a look at your memories of first meeting Kim. To my surprise, though, I find that your first sight of him was not inside the club where he first saw you; for your memory is instead from a week before that club night, downstairs in the First Out Café, where he never noticed you but you most surely noticed him. In the corner, there he was: a handsome masculine blond boy, slightly sad-eyed, deep in thought, biting his nails as he read the menu. You were startled, as you watched him, to sense across the café the erection of his penis and his nipples, as their heat spread towards you— no it didn’t, you correct yourself whenever you remember this scene— that couldn’t happen! Anyway, then he ordered a veggie-burger, nothing else, and his voice was deep but also tinged with a blush of immaturity, as if newly broken. You started to realise you were not going to be able to get out of summoning up the guts to approach him (such approaches not being something you did often), and this prospect straight away made you feel so young and vulnerable that you laughed at yourself inside. “Get it together,” you thought, as you got up, but already your body had that tight invisible all-over quivering it gets when emotionally naked, as if pressed close under your skin against your clothes. Your throat drily gulped and clunked. “For fuck’s sake,” you shouted within yourself, “enough with this nerviness, you’re not fifteen. You are not going to faint, you are not going to faint,” and you frowned and walked purposefully towards Kim’s table and towards it some more … and then

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