Runaway

was not able to wait for the play to be over. She was shivering in the air-conditioned theater because this dress was made of such light material and had no sleeves. Or it might have been from nervousness. She made her apologetic way to the end of the row, and climbed up the aisle with its irregular steps and went out into the daylight of the lobby. Raining again, very hard. Alone in the Ladies Room, the same one where she had lost her purse, she worked at her hair. The damp was destroying her pouf, the hair she had rolled to be smooth was falling into wispy curly black strands around her face. She should have brought hairspray. She did as good a job as she could, back-combing.
    The rain had stopped when she came out, and again the sun was shining, glaring on the wet pavement. Now she set out. Her legs felt weak, as on those occasions when she had to go to the blackboard, at school, to demonstrate a math problem, or had to stand in front of the class to recite memory work. Too soon, she was at the corner of Downie Street. Within a few minutes now, her life would be changed. She was not ready, but she could not stand any delay.
    In the second block she could see ahead of her that odd little house, held in place by the conventional shop buildings on either side.
    Closer she came, closer. The door stood open, as was the case with most shops along the street—not many of them had put in air-conditioning. There was just a screen door in place to keep out the flies.
    Up the two steps, then she stood outside the door. But did not push it open for a moment, so that she could get her eyes used to the half-dark interior, and not stumble when she went in.
    He was there, in the work space beyond the counter, busy under a single bulb. He was bent forward, seen in profile, engrossed in the work he was doing on a clock. She had feared a change. She had feared in fact that she was not remembering him accurately. Or that Montenegro might have altered something—given him a new haircut, a beard. But no—he was the same. The work light shining on his head showed the same bristle of hair, glinting as before, silver with its red-brown tarnish. A thick shoulder, slightly hunched, sleeve rolled up to bare the muscled forearm. An expression on his face of concentration, keenness, perfect appreciation of whatever he was doing, of the mechanism he was working with. The same look that had been in her mind, though she had never seen him working on his clocks before. She had been imagining that look bent on herself.
    No. She didn’t want to walk in. She wanted him to get up, come towards her, open the door. So she called to him. Daniel. Being shy at the last moment of calling him Danilo, for fear she might pronounce the foreign syllables in a clumsy way.
    He had not heard—or probably, because of what he was doing, he delayed looking up. Then he did look up, but not at her—he appeared to be searching for something he needed at the moment. But in raising his eyes he caught sight of her. He carefully moved something out of his way, pushed back from the worktable, stood up, came reluctantly towards her.
    He shook his head at her slightly.
    Her hand was ready to push the door open, but she did not do it. She waited for him to speak, but he did not. He shook his head again. He was perturbed. He stood still. He looked away from her, looked around the shop—looked at the array of clocks, as if they might give him some information or some support. When he looked again at her face, he shivered, and involuntarily—but perhaps not—he bared his front teeth. As if the sight of her gave him a positive fright, an apprehension of danger.
    And she stood there, frozen, as if there was a possibility still that this might be a joke, a game.
    Now he came towards her again, as if he had made up his mind what to do. Not looking at her anymore, but acting with determination and—so it seemed to her—revulsion, he put a hand against the wooden door, the shop door which stood open, and pushed it shut in her face.
    This was a shortcut. With horror she understood what he was doing. He was putting on this act because it was an easier way to get rid of her than making an explanation, dealing with her astonishment and female carrying-on, her wounded feelings and possible collapse and tears.
    Shame, terrible shame, was what she felt. A more confident, a more experienced, woman would have felt anger and walked away in a fine fury.
Piss on him.
Robin had heard a