Am I really this nervous? he wondered, having convinced himself otherwise on the cab drive over. It was hard wanting someone this much, and the growing sense of losing control both irritated and, paradoxically, excited him; she wasn’t like his usual prey, younger, impressionable women and men, who unquestioningly bought into his charisma, the power and all the manifestations of it. Susie challenged him – he knew he’d have to win her over, seduce her intellectually; and the gift he held in his arms was the first part of a well-thought-out strategy.
*
‘I brought this for you.’ He thrust the parcel into her hands. She carried it over to the huge kitchen bench and pulled the paper off. It was a small aquarium, containing a miniature desert landscape, with a rock arch, under which cowered a large reddish tarantula.
‘Most men bring flowers. You bring spiders?’
‘I read that you love them, that you considered them your totem.’
She grinned. ‘I do. Their love lives are great metaphors.’
‘The females eat the males, right, during sex?’
‘Depends on the species. Some have evolved tricksy ways of avoiding the female post-coitus. There’s these crazy bark spiders – they orally lubricate the female’s genitals during mating to pacify her and avoid being eaten. Interestingly, the males only bother doing this to the older females.’
‘Well, if I had to choose between cunnilingus or death, I know which one I’d go for.’
‘I’m guessing the younger females are smaller so the chances of being eaten by one are far less. Tarantulas are a little more romantic. The males mate only once; they reach maturity then spend months spinning a sac full of sperm like a present. They carry it on their backs until they find a female to deposit the sac into – that in itself is precarious – then they die of exhaustion.’
‘Romance worthy of opera,’ he quipped.
Susie stared into the aquarium. ‘She’s gorgeous, what’s her name?’
‘Winnie, as in Winifred. she can keep you company while you’re in NY. I’ve organised for a supply of baby mice to be delivered every week or so. They’re her favourites, apparently.’
‘I’ll think of you every time I feed her.’
‘That’s the idea. So you’ll need walking boots, not five-inch heels.’
‘I’ll put my Doc Martens on. Where are you taking me?’
‘It’s a surprise but you’ll love it. It’s one of my secret places, I’ve never taken anyone there before.’
‘So why me?’
‘Because I think you’ll get it.’
*
The grain terminal stood monumental and stark in its decrepitude against the sky and water. The 12-storey-high fortress was a testimony to past industry and Susie, staring up at the beige-coloured building splattered with soot and dirt like some rough charcoal sketch, fell in love with it immediately. ‘It’s like something straight out of Gotham City. You can almost imagine it as a black-and-white Marvel comic illustration. The way sections of it are tumbling back into the harbour like the exoskeleton of some massive centipede is great.’
‘The locals call it the elevator. Isn’t it fantastic? It’s like some mythical Orwellian vision of the future past, or something like that, you know what I mean?’ Felix raised his voice against the wind that was whipping up from the Hudson.
‘They used it to store grain?’
‘For washing, drying and storing – then it would be loaded onto freight ships to be made into beer and flour eventually. It’s stood empty since 1965.’
‘Wow.’
‘Come on, we’
re going in.’
‘But there’s a no-trespass sign. And cops?’
‘Screw them. I know a way in.’
*