Chapter 13 #2
Clemence leads him into the bathroom, helping him sit down on the edge of the tub.
She wets a washcloth, holding it gently to the wound, and he’s submitted to her entirely.
Whereas before, it’s been only resistance, Toby darting around corners and bounding up ladders to escape her, she’s touching him now, and his eyes are closed, almost as if in pleasure.
His eyelashes are impossibly long, and she’s tempted to kiss those full lips, to push her luck ever so far, but no doubt that would jerk him right out of whatever state he is in.
Toby would leap away and run out the door, or have an anaphylactic reaction to her lip balm, and Clemence would never see him again, which would be inconvenient for all kinds of reasons.
So she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to kiss Toby anyway, she just likes his lips, which part gently into an almost smile as she holds the warm washcloth against his brow.
“You don’t need stitches,” she tells his again, softly so not to disturb the spell. “You’re just bleeding a lot.” It was starting to let up, she thought, though maybe this was wishful thinking.
“I have a clotting disorder,” Toby whispers. “Thankfully mild.”
“I have Band-Aids,” she tells him. But Toby is allergic to Band-Aids, it turns out, something in the adhesive that gives him a rash, so she has to get out the first aid kit properly, feeling so capable, unrolling the gauze and cutting off a square with the pair of tiny scissors.
Ordinary medical tape will be fine, he says.
He tells her that she’s a good nurse, which nobody has said to Clemence in her life.
Once the bandage is sorted, Toby follows her out of the bathroom and perches on the edge of her bed, moving pillows out of the way to make this possible.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
He says, “Dizzy.” He sounds woozy. It was only a surface wound, and if he’d showed up at the hospital for stitches, they would have laughed at him.
But now he’s seen his reflection in the mirror, that clean bandage against his pale white forehead, and he imagines himself to have survived great peril.
“I’ll have to monitor this. It might be a concussion. ”
“It’s not, it’s just a scrape.” Clemence wants to offer him something—a drink? She has milk. Does he want more milk? But he doesn’t. He’s happy to accept a glass of water, though.
“Got to replenish my fluids.” Toby is the most ridiculous human being Clemence has ever known in her life, and she knows her family, so that’s saying a lot.
He drinks the water and confesses: “I know Crampton is paying you to talk to me. She told me. She isn’t nice, but she’s never sneaky.
She thinks I need to get out more, that I’m too isolated. ”
“Well, maybe she’s right.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “People aren’t really my thing.
” And something in Clemence’s expression must betray the hurt she feels when she hears him say that, after all this trouble, because he rushes to reassure her, a rare display of empathy: “You, well. I mean, you’re actually okay.
” Sounding as though this revelation surprises him, too.
And then he looks around the room suspiciously.
“What I don’t understand, though—is she paying you now? ”
“Now?”
“Your shift is over. You’d left for the day.”
“Well, maybe I need someone to talk to, too,” says Clemence. “It’s not all about the profit.”
“Good, since you can’t profit much. Is it even worth it?”
“I like the books,” says Clemence. She pulls a chair out from her little table and sits down across from Toby.
The bleeding has stopped. The bandage on his head is still pristine, and makes him look more like a tortured nineteenth-century poet than ever.
“And getting rid of Women’s Fiction. I want to do that.
I’m making progress.” She’d already moved over Jane Austen, and was making room for the Brontes after dumping Dan Browns and Michael Crichtons.
They were going to be donated to the jumble.
Clemence was confused about how they’d ever made it into Literature in the first place.
“I just stick them wherever there’s room,” Toby admits. “We don’t get around to organizing much.”
“I can tell,” Clemence says.
“I should probably get back to work, though,” he says. “I’m allowed to take breaks, duck out for a few minutes, but it’s been a while now. Somebody might notice.”
“Nobody will notice.”
“Still.” Toby stands up. “I’m less dizzy.” Shaking his head sideways as though to dislodge something from his right ear. “Thank you,” he tells her.
“I’ll walk you down,” says Clemence, trailing him down the two sets of stairs to the foyer.
And just before he opens the outside door, she calls, “Stop!” He turns around, alarmed.
“Just, I mean. Hold on a sec.” And then she knocks at Mrs. Yeung’s door across the hall, and her landlady opens it as though she’d been standing there waiting on the other side, which is mostly likely.
Clemence says to her, “I wanted to introduce you. Toby, this is Mrs. Yeung,” and both of them are polite enough, neither seemingly struck by the strangeness of the interaction, because possibly for Mrs. Yeung and Toby, things are weird all the time, particularly where Clemence Lathbury is concerned.
Mrs. Yeung comes out on the porch to wait while Clemence walks Toby down to the sidewalk, and Clemence is conscious of her eyes on them.
Silently, she is imploring Toby not to lose his footing, to remain upright and fulfill his part in this role she’s cast him in, which he’s nearly finished performing and he’s done so well.
He stops and turns to her. “This was nice,” he says, as though surprised, and Clemence knows what he means. “Other than the blood.”
“The blood’s never the best part of anything.”
“Thank you for the bandage,” he says, his voice a murmur.
Lingering. What is he waiting for? What is Mrs. Yeung waiting for?
And what is she waiting for, Clemence asks herself, for crying out loud, so she follows through.
Standing up on her tiptoes to deliver a kiss to those big cushion lips, a quick one, nothing fancy, but still, he stumbles backwards and says, “Whoa.” He doesn’t fall down though. She’ll give him that.
“See you at work,” she says, her voice just low enough that Mrs. Yeung might imagine she’s bestowing an intimacy. And then he turns and flees, and Clemence hopes that from a distance it doesn’t actually look like that’s what he’s doing.
She waits, watching him go, his wild hair flying, his narrow back but large shoulders, getting smaller and smaller. How his pants are too short. If Clemence stands here long enough, will Mrs. Yeung have turned around and gone back inside?
But no, she is waiting, arms folded. She looks delighted. “So that’s him?” she calls. “That’s your boyfriend? Because he looks like a child. And what’s with the bandage?”
“He hit his head.”
“I don’t like him,” says Mrs. Yeung.
Clemence says, “Okay.” It’s none of her business, anyway.
“There’s no life in him. He looks like a vampire. You, you’re fat and healthy. It’s a bad match. Does he expect you to feed him?”
“Well, I can’t, really. He’s got a lot of intolerances. He’s kind of delicate.”
“My son is more attractive.”
Clemence doesn’t speak. This is a trap.
“Charles eats everything. The meat, the gluten …”
“Good for him. And he’s married to a doctor.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, you did,” says Clemence. She is suddenly very tired.
“Hang on.” Mrs. Yeung disappears back into her apartment.
Charles’s book is still sitting on the table in her foyer.
Clemence thinks about whether she’ll ever see Charles again.
She hears his mother banging around in the kitchen, and keeps waiting.
She wonders when the Yeungs moved up to the first floor.
Students live in the basement now, even though the space is dark and dingy.
Mrs. Yeung comes out again with a mason jar. “It’s soup,” she says, thrusting it into Clemence’s hands. “For your boyfriend. None of the gluten. Tell him it’s vegan.”
“It is?”
Mrs. Yeung shrugs. “More or less. It’s good for him. Good for strengthening.”
Clemence thanks her, and turns to head upstairs.
Mrs. Yeung calls, “I’ll tell Charles you say hello? Next time I speak to him?”
“Sure,” says Clemence, appreciating this woman’s formidable use of emotional torture. When combined with her kindness and generosity, the effect was absolutely discombobulating, and most people would just surrender.
“I’ll tell him you brought your boyfriend by. That I met Tony.”
“It’s Toby.”
“That part,” says Mrs. Young, not wrongly, “doesn’t matter at all.”