The White Room by Craig Higginson

Author:Craig Higginson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Pierre

Perhaps she is inexhaustible, he is thinking, like the sea. Perhaps he will be able to spend the rest of his life swimming deeper and deeper into her, never reaching the bottom of her.

Is this love?

This plunge into the dark unknown, this thrill of terror?

He wants to disappear into her.

He wants to disappear.

IX

Pierre

When they return to her apartment, every object has gained a new resonance.

So which one of these books did you take? he asks.

* * *

They each had three beers at lunch as well as extra bread with the onion soup. He was surprised she could consume so much – she who claimed to eat no more than half a banana and a ginger biscuit for breakfast.

* * *

She fishes out a book from a row of white Picador publications from the eighties. This one here, she says. Rilke’s Selected Poems. I borrowed it from a lecturer and never returned it.

That isn’t exactly stealing.

It was one of his favourite books. He wanted it back.

What else?

I took Sons and Lovers from a friend who lives in Surrey. From her parents’ house, in fact. I take books whenever I go there. Rebecca’s parents’ place is where I got most of my Virginia Woolf. Would you like me to carry on?

She laughs at the expression on his face.

I worked in a bookshop in London for a while, she continues. On Fulham Road. I stole a great many books from there. All my Everyman’s Library. That entire row.

You must try to stop.

I am.

She is standing in the middle of the room, looking like a young girl. She seems amazed by herself – and yet, it seems, still in need of his approval.

Why do you do it?

I suppose I like the danger, she says, staring at him as if expecting him to try to cover her mouth. Living with the guilt. Having something I can focus on and feel particularly bad about. I mean bad in a particular way, rather than just generally.

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