The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt Read Free Book Online Page A

hoped he could see the smile. All she could make out of Shapiro now was his silhouette—the line of his head and shoulders in the window. Lily unhooked her bra. She was glad she had worn the one with a front clasp so she didn’t have to struggle with the back. She let it fall down her arms and then crossed her hands over her breasts and rolled her shoulders. These were borrowed gestures, but that was part of the pleasure. For an instant she thought about Marilyn, took the bra in one hand and flung it across the room. The bra sailed higher and farther than she had intended. On its way down, it caught the TV’s On/Off button, and there it remained, hanging several inches off the floor. Lily stared at the bra. It was gray. I’ve got to go to the Laundromat, she thought, and looked down at her breasts, then at her feet. Red marks had formed where the laces rubbed into her skin. She felt naked. For an instant she considered making a dash for the bed and rolling herself in the blanket, but instead she covered her breasts again. Oh my God, she thought. Her heart was beating fast now, and she took a long breath before she took off her underpants. You can’t stop now. It would look really dumb, like you lost your nerve. But the sight of her pubic hair sobered her even more—a triangle of dark hair, more poignant than erotic. Lily didn’t touch the shoes, even though they were pinching her toes like vises. Standing at her window wearing nothing but the shoes, Lily looked across the street at Edward Shapiro. He left the window. For a moment she stared at the back of his canvas, at the chair and the black telephone, and she almost cried. But she held back the tears, walked to the window, and after wrapping herself in the curtain, sat down on the sill. She could smell lilacs in the air. The scent probably came from the bushes outside the library at the end of the block. Their last days, she thought. And that was when Lily heard the music. A man started singing in a language Lily didn’t know, and after a short time a woman answered him. Edward Shapiro came back to the window, and Lily looked at him and listened to the man and woman singing together. She leaned back against the window frame. The crackled paint scraped against her shoulder bone, and she adjusted the curtain to protect her skin. It was a duet from an opera. That much she knew, but it was much simpler than she had imagined that kind of music could be. She thought it was the prettiest song she had ever heard, and she wanted it to go on and on because she knew it was his way of talking to her without talking to her, and she didn’t feel like crying anymore. Listening to the voices of those two people, she imagined that the real adventure of her life was beginning now, that after this, anything could happen, anything at all. When the song ended, the man left the window to turn off the record and returned for a second time. Lily looked into his dark face. They could have called to each other or waved, but they didn’t. They continued to look at each other for what seemed like a long time, but maybe it wasn’t. Lily heard the sound of a car up the street, the wind in the tree branches at the end of the block, and then running footsteps in the alley behind the Stuart Hotel. She looked toward the sound, but saw nobody, and then the footsteps stopped. She realized that Mabel wasn’t typing anymore either. Lily took a last look at Edward Shapiro, and then she stood on tiptoe in the painful shoes and slowly closed the curtains.
    *   *   *
    When Lily walked into the hallway at five-fifteen the next morning, dressed and ready for work, she heard Mabel’s door open, saw the woman’s head push through the opening, and heard her say in a loud voice, “Don Giovanni.”
    “What?” Lily whispered to signal a lower tone.
    “Didn’t you hear it?” Mabel brought her voice down a few notches. “The duet from Don Giovanni blasting from across the street about ten-thirty,