About a Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the beach and I loved the way that the ocean water had coarsened her long black hair. She still had sand in the creases of her buttocks, and fanny; the saltiness of her must have been emphasised by the sea. I loved everything about her. I loved her . We had very little sleep; I wanted to say everything to her, do everything with her, but in the end we spoke very little, and learned a great deal about each other.
    The next day at work I offered to unpack the new books because I was too exhausted to face serving people. I loitered in the stockroom and read.
    The book I chose, one that had just arrived, was Notes from Underground , by Dostoyevsky. Hilarious yet disturbing was the quotation from the Sunday Times on the cover. It had a moody photograph of a man’s unshaven face, cigarette between his lips, in tones of blue. It looked like a modern, grungy novel, not one written in Russia in the 1860S .
    I am a sick man … I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.
    I could imagine hand-selling it to certain people. Hand-selling . It was one of those specialist bookseller terms that I loved.
    I think I loved everything that day.
    â€˜Anna,’ came the voice of the manager from the doorway. I closed the book. ‘Anna, there’s someone to see you.’
    It was Flynn. She was standing in an aisle at the back of the shop, pretending to browse through a pile of discounted cookbooks, and looked up shyly as I approached. It was the first time we’d seen each other since parting that morning, only hours before, yet it was long enough for us to have discovered a newfound shyness. It seemed that all we could do was smile.
    â€˜I was on my way to work,’ said Flynn, ‘and I just wanted to see you again.’
    I couldn’t think how to reply. The manager was standing only metres away.
    â€˜So … that’s all,’ she said, with a pleased, secretive smile. ‘Anyway, shall I see you tonight?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said, my mouth dry.
    â€˜I’ll come to your place then.’
    And with a lingering glance, she was gone.
    On the way home, I deliberately avoided going past the café where Flynn worked. I ducked down a side street to a supermarket, where I bought eggs and potatoes and mushrooms and salad. As an afterthought, I bought a tin of cat food. The grey cat had spent the night on the bed.
    I waited impatiently for Flynn to arrive, attempting to tidy the house and discovering there was little to tidy, I lived such a sparse, monk-like life. In the last light of day I went outside to call the cat but it didn’t appear.
    I sat on the warm brick wall in the going-down sun and thought about her. All the clichés about being in love were true. I went over every word, every gesture of the night before. The cat had sat at the foot of the bed, and purred, and Flynn had brought it into bed with us. And then, still unable to sleep, we decided we were ravenously hungry and got up for cheese on toast, which we had eaten sitting close together on this very wall in the dead of night, the whole town lying silent below.
    The night became chilly, so we went back to bed and huddled under a light doona, and must have slept at last, because I woke with my arm wrapped round her waist. She opened her eyes and stretched and smiled. I watched her get up and go to the window and look out. She had such a strong, narrow back, slim waist and long legs. I loved looking at her.
    Then she wrapped a sheet around herself like a toga, and walked outside, and crouched on the wall in the sun, watching over the town. She smiled up at me when I delivered a cup of tea. And it seemed like a miracle that I had someone who wanted to be with me.
    â€˜Anna?’
    Flynn arrived at last. She had been knocking at the door for ages, and finally walked around the building to find me sitting out on the wall daydreaming. It was now quite dark.
    She had washed her