Shooting in the Dark

floor to ceiling. Two walk-in wardrobes were open and Sam followed Angeles into one of them.
    ‘This could be a boudoir,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t a wardrobe.’
    ‘I don’t think you need a boudoir,’ Sam told her. ‘Can’t imagine you sulking.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, waving her arm histrionically. ‘It’s not unknown for me to have a long face. When I was small I had fits of pique.’
    There was no indication that she couldn’t ‘see’ her surroundings. She must have penetrated this room, this house, with her fingers, with every living sense in her body. She inhabited it completely, in a way that a sighted person rarely could.
    She took down a hanger with a full-length skirt and jacket in black silk. She loosened the skirt, which had a Turkish feel to it, from the hanger, and held both garments against her. ‘Dior?’ she asked rhetorically. Sam didn’t bother answering. She wasn’t going to wear it. ‘This one’s fun,’ she said. It was a mini dress with a feather boa at the hem and a white lace jacket. ‘But not for the theatre. Difficult to sit in.’
    ‘How can you remember what these clothes look like?’ Sam asked. There was a line of twenty, twenty-five outfits on the rack. But every time she reached for one she knew exactly what it was.
    ‘They’re special labels,’ she said. ‘I can tell by touch what each outfit looks like. More important is what it feels like to wear. I can usually remember that. Or when I get it out of the wardrobe it comes back to me.’
    Sam got into helping her. No, he didn’t like the yellow one. Yeah, maybe the midnight-blue cocktail dress wouldn’t be suitable. Pity, though. She settled for a wool crepe creation with satin ribbons hanging from the waist. There was a naive part of Sam Turner that believed he was going to watch her slip into the thing. A few seconds ticked away when he didn’t know if he’d manage to stop himself chewing a hole in the Persian rug.
    She didn’t ask him to leave the room. At least he didn’t hear her. But she stopped talking, stopped moving, and she raised her eyebrows. It was a signal passing aircraft might’ve picked up with these modern instruments they have, and it got to Sam as well, only a few seconds later, because he didn’t have the technology.
    ‘Right,’ he said, reality catching at the back of his throat. ‘You get yourself dressed. I’ll wait downstairs.’
    He couldn’t read her face. Didn’t know if it was relief or disappointment.
     
    Neat trick, the thing about Braille labels on her clothes. Obvious when you knew, but before then it seemed like magic. There must be other things going on with her that he didn’t see. Little tricks she was using to find her way through the world, but that were hidden from him because he could only think with his eyes.
    Did she know what he looked like, for example? Once or twice he’d wondered if he should offer up his face to her fingers, but he couldn’t find the courage. He wasn’t sure she’d want to feel his face, anyway. Felt like too intimate an act for the current state of their relationship. Maybe later?
    He sank into the sofa and closed his eyes, used the tips of fingers to feel around his forehead, his eyes and nose, the line of his lips. There was the rough edge of stubble as four hours’ growth of beard pushed its way through. The flesh was cool and puffy, sagging a little round the jowls. If the woman ever got her hands on it, she’d think she’d run up against a monster. He’d have to try and explain it to her beforehand, somehow hint that he didn’t look a lot unlike Gene Hackman.
    She’d understand about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, she was an intelligent woman. The nose on its own, hey, laughable, you know what I mean? The ears without any context, just stuck on each side of the head. The eyes, the chin, the lips, all these parts don’t mean anything by themselves. But when they are seen as a whole there takes place a transformation, a metamorphosis. Something magical happens, what could have been a disaster turns out to be, well, not compelling exactly, maybe the right word is intriguing.
    He listened as she left the bedroom and came to the head of the stairs. He opened his eyes, expecting to see her descend. But she didn’t appear.
    ‘Sam?’
    She spoke quietly, trepidation in her voice. He got up from the sofa and crossed over to the foot of the stairs. ‘What is it?’ he