The lion grumbled a little in his throat but trotted off into the house with the most toug obediend I took breath, again -- I noticed Id somehow managed not to for some little time -- and sank into one of the white metal terrace chairs. My poor heart was going pit-a-pat, I tell you, but the personage who had at last appeared from somewhere in the darkening pouher apologised for nor expressed about my nasty shock. She stood there, arms akimbo, surveyih a satirical, pierg, blue eye.
Except for the jarring circumstahat in one hand she held a stainless steel, many-branched dlestick of awesomely chaste design, she looked like a superannuated lumberjack, plaid shirt, blue jeans, workboots, butch leather belt with a giant silver skull and crossbones for a buckle, coarse, cropped, grey hair esg from a red bandana tied Indian-style around her head. Her skin was wrinkled in pinpricks like the surface of Parmesan cheese and a putty grey in colour.
"You the ohats e about the thesis?" she queried. Her di ure hillbilly.
I burbled in the affirmative.
"Hes e about the thesis," she repeated to herself sardonically and disforted me still further by again cag to herself.
But now an ear-splitting roar announced a was about to ehis Ma, or Pa, Kettle perso down her dlesti the terrace table, briskly struck a mat the seat of her pants and applied the flame to the wicks, dissipating the gathering twilight as She rolled out the door. Rolled. She sat in a e and ivory leather wheel-chair as if upon a portable throne. Her right haed negligently on the lions mane. She was a sight to see.
How long had she spent dressing up for the interview? Hours. Days. Weeks. She had on a white satin bias-cut lace-trimmed negligee circa 1935, her skin had that sugar almond, one hundred per t Max Factor look and she wore what I assumed was a wig due to the unnatural precision of the snowy curls. Only shed gooo far with the wig; it gave her a Medusa look. Her mouth looked funny because her lips had disappeared with age so all that was left ainted-irapezoid.
But she didnt look her age, at all, at all -- oh, no; she looked a good ten or fifteen years youhough I doubt the vision of a sexy septuagenarian was the one for which shed striven as she decked herself out. Impressive, though. Impressive as hell.
And you k ohis was the face that launched a thousand ships. Not because anything lovely was still smouldering away in those old bones; shed, as it were, transded beauty. But something in the way she held her head, some imperious arrogance, demahat you look at her and keep on looking.
At once I went into automatic, I assumed the stance of gigolo. I picked up her hand, kissed it, said: "Enté", bowed. Had I not been wearing sneakers, Id have clicked my heels. The Spirit appeared pleased but not surprised by this, but she couldnt smile for fear of crag her make-up. She whispered me a throaty greeting, eyeing me in a very peculiar way, a way that made the look in the lions eye seem positively vegetarian.
It freaked me. She freaked me. It was her star quality. So thats what they mean! I thought. Id never before, nor am I likely to again, entered such psychic force as streamed out of that frail little old lady in her antique lingerie and her wheel-chair. And, yes, there was something undeniably erotic about it, although she was old as the hills; it was as though she got the most extraordinary sexual charge from being looked at an