Mating by Norman Rush Page B

be like personally? Would a spy compensate, say, for the duplicity of his working day by being the opposite in his free time with his loved ones or one? What kind of spy was Z, in the sense of how far he was expected to go in corruption or surveilling or whatever his job description required? Just as a feat, how much that I wasn’t supposed to know might I be able to get him to tell me? I was getting ahead of myself, but I could tell Z was in a state of appreciation toward me. I gave him a couple of minutes to arrange himself before he stepped out of the car at my place. I had invited him to come in for iced tea.
    A little breeze had sprung up, and it did a cruel thing to him, lifting the lattice of hair up from his head like a lid. I know he noticed it, but he was stoical and ignored it, which went to my heart.
    He had an intelligent line. All the vital statistics were delivered in passing, while he was ostensibly talking about other things. He was divorced. He was lonely. He found the anthropology of the country fascinating but unfortunately in his circles there was no one of like mind, perhaps it was just a British failing. Here he was showing me that he was atypical and not imperialistic. Nota bene: he liked to eat out but he hated eating alone. Nothing interested him more than anthropology. He was virtually an amateur anthropologist. All this was like marbling as he talked cynically about the economics of the country. I saw him pick up that I liked a slightly cynical approach to social reality, and he went more with that. There were some clichés. He missed West Africa, which is what everybody says who was ever posted there—the Gambia, the color, the markets, the people so happy they’re practically giddy. I couldn’t tell him enough about my time in Keteng and the Tswapong Hills.
    The only thing he did that I didn’t like was to try to strum a little on my possible fear of being alone in the house. He went on about break-ins increasing, until he saw he was in the wrong pew. I told him I positively enjoyed living alone and the single thing I didn’t like about it was stepping on millipedes coiled up like coasters on the kitchen floor. There were a lot of them getting indoors somehow. Re the break-ins, I assumed he was trying to cast himself as a protector type I could count on.
    He took me to dinner a few times. It was all liberal arts. And anthropology. He represented himself as a voracious reader and he went out of his way to read a couple of things I recommended. He took me to a place I didn’t even know existed, a deluxe restaurant connected to the golf club. It was run by Portuguese who had owned a sumptuous place in Beira before the liberation. Z was not boring, or rather his footwork was not boring. He stopped flashing his avuncular side bit by bit. He started me out reading Arnold Bennett, which I’m grateful to him for. The whole thing was very much like synchronized swimming. We wanted something from each other but we kept going elegantly side by side, not saying what we wanted. He still thought I was seeing Martin, which I had somewhat led him to assume. Finally it was all too leisurely for me, and I struck.
Gratitude Is a Drug
    I was after his secrets. I had some already, but so far they were all in the category of personal vanity. The girdle was one. His tan was another. He took a carotene product you can get in South Africa. It gives you a terra cotta appearance and makes your excreta gaudy. He used alum on the backs of his hands for age spots. I was finding myself in a game. It was like deciding to have an obsession. The game was roughly that I would get more out of him than he wanted to tell me—but not in exchange for what he wanted from me, which was yet to reveal itself but which probably meant tidbits about Martin and his friends. From me he would get nothing, not even fabrications on that score, although it might be necessary to start the game with fabrications. I would trade sex, if I had