“Interesting!” He gave a short laugh. “We used to have to wear those to dancing school. The waltz, the cha cha cha. Had to escort the debutantes, you see. I used to wonder about the gloves. Were they to keep me clean or the girl? I rather think, as a sweaty boy, it was the latter.”
Rosie hadn’t thought of this, she hadn’t wondered at all why The Giggle Man wore the gloves. Now, she considered the purpose, and the purposefulness. Gloves were a barrier. And why white? Not rubber gloves, washing-up gloves, winter wool or even the kind doctors wore. She said: “I think the gloves were like masks for the hands so his hands weren’t his hands.”
“Hand masks?”
“The gloves create an objectivity.”
“I never thought of that.” Hobie now thought. “It’s a way of creating the impersonal while doing something as intimate as dancing. You are clever.”
Rosie pressed her lips together, she didn’t want to smile. Hobie put his hand lightly on her arm, a moment only; then he released her. “Let me show you something.”
He led her down the hall, turned right into a large drawing room. This was not a room for drawing, she knew, but for withdrawing from the dining room after dining. The walls and ceiling were crimson, huge windows overlooked the gardens to the sundimming sea beyond. The overstuffed sofas were pale blue satin with maroon trim — a daring contrast to the walls. What must it be like to walk in these rooms with a sense of complete possession? Mine. Everything was perfect, beautiful, tasteful. Here, too, were fresh flowers — tumbling roses among a twisting dark creeper and a wild ruff of Queen Anne’s lace.
“What do you think?” Hobie was saying, standing in front of a small painting hung discreetly on a side wall. “I just got it last week.”
Rosie stepped closer, and Hobie stepped aside. “That’s not —”
“Yes. It is.”
The low, bland light of a Dutch winter, the claustrophobia of a life lived primarily indoors — how the black and white tile flooring and wood paneling narrowed that interior space so it pressed upon the thin, upright couple who stood deep within the framework. The husband seemed bored — something about the focus of his eyes, as if he was looking beyond the artist who’d been working in the foreground. But his young wife, much younger — pale, almond-eyed — stared boldly and immediately at the viewer, as if in challenge. The artist had chosen to maximize the interior, possibly to show the couple’s wealth through the quality of the woodwork and flooring. Yet, the effect was a subtle sense of imprisonment. Just glimpsed in the background, a maid stood by an open door. In the sunlit outer world, she held a dead hare by the ears.
“You have this in your house.” Rosie was breathless.
“Would you like to touch it?”
“No!”
“I’m giving you permission.”
“I can’t!”
“Go on!”
Rosie lifted her hand, her fingers lightly caressed the paint.
“Mitzi doesn’t understand.” Hobie had put even more distance between them. “We had a terrible row about where to hang it. She says it ruins the pink.”
“I can see her point.”
“Really?”
“I mean, this is the wrong room for it.”
He tilted his head to one side, waiting for her to continue. She felt a rush: this incredibly rich man was listening to her.
“You never come in here. Or you come in here only to see the painting. And that’s not enough. Look at the girl.” Hobie looked. “She wants you to look at her. Maybe vanity. She’s proud.”
Hobie nodded.
“But she doesn’t see the house is a kind of prison for them.”
Hobie looked closer.
“See how he’s contracted the space, used lines to create a kind of claustrophobia.”
“There you are!”
Rosie and Hobie were standing several feet apart. They had never touched, only his hand briefly on her arm in the hallway. There was nothing to hide. Mitzi glanced down at Rosie’s bare feet and smiled — slowly; as the wires seemed to catch on the little levers behind her face, so that the smile stopped then started, stopped then started, requiring effort to have it achieve full height. “Bennett’s looking for you, Rosalee.”
For their first date, two weeks after meeting at MoMA, Bennett had taken Rosie to The Stanhope Hotel on Fifth Avenue for tea. The maître-d’ led them across the room to a table in the corner. The room was unexceptional, pea-green wallpaper and fusty furnishings, and the patrons were mostly old ladies. Two of them knew Bennett, and he stopped to fuss over them and they kept touching him, one of them murmuring something about poor, sick Pookie. The woman spoke in indulgent singsong, “Poor widdle Pookie-wookie.” Bennett was very sorry to hear about Pookie, he had kissed her hand.
The maître-d’ had pulled Rosie’s chair out and she didn’t know why, she thought she’d dropped something, so she looked down.
“Rosie,” Bennett had whispered. “Just sit.”
Expertly, the man put the chair under her ass and she gave a little laugh. A waiter was already there, and even as he held out the tombstone-sized menus, Bennett told him, “The usual, please.”
“What’s wrong with Pookie?” Rosie asked in a low voice.
“Lung cancer.”
Rosie had said, “I didn’t know dogs could get lung cancer.”
Bennett’s eyes had sparkled, his mouth stilled a smile. “Pookie is her husband. Smoked three packs a day.”
The tea came. Not the tea Rosie had ever seen — a Lipton teabag in a mug — but in a china pot with china cups, saucers, side plates, silver spoons, tiny silver forks and tiny round knives like dolls’ cutlery. A jug for milk. A silver dish for the butter, beading with cold. A tiered tray of pastel-colored cakes and scones. Bennett poured the tea, which curled out of the pot and into her cup with a smoky aroma.
“Lapsang souchong,” he’d told her. “Have it with the tiniest dash of milk.”
As well as the table, he had reserved a room with a view of the park, and after tea he took her there, which was presumptuous and also thrilling. He took off his clothes while she sat on the bed, remembering to keep her shoulders back. Bennett had the bulky body of a man, he was tanned even though it was midwinter, and when he moved to stand in front of her she traced the line of white around his waist with her finger.
“Use your tongue,” he said.
Afterward, when he saw the dab of bright red blood on the white sheet, he touched her face, “I had no idea you were a virgin.”
Virgin had sounded odd, old-fashioned, Mary in her blue robes, clean and pure.
“Hey.” Bennett had kissed her. “Don’t cry.” He had held her, cloaked in his body.
“Rosie? Hello. It’s Hobie.”
She scrambled out of bed, almost dropping the phone.
“The gent who lives in the big house up the hill,” he prompted.
“Of course, Hobie.” Did he really think she’d forgotten him?
“I keep thinking about what you said, about the painting. And you’re right, it needs to be elsewhere. Are you free at all this morning? Could you come and help me hang it?”