The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Fifty Seven: The Doll

She wasn't always despondent. She didn't spend all her mornings on the floor, curled around those blinding squares of sunlight. Her moods went through stages, but they were definitely improved by Manda, who had started taking her out for coffee at the Grand Cafe, or for morning strolls in Christchurch Meadow.

Jack often accompanied them on these outings, but he couldn't see what was so mood-enhancing about them. As far as he could tell, they just consisted of Manda reproaching Ellini for her gloomy attitude, although sometimes the two of them would branch out to complaining about men, and Jack would smile rather smugly, because he knew he was an example of everything they were complaining about, and he knew they both adored him.

And then the doll helped her—although the story of the doll was still troubling to him. It didn't cause him pain exactly, because nothing did, but it gave him a moment's agitation every time the memory passed through his mind. It felt like a slippery fish that he was supposed to be grabbing hold of.

They had been discussing—as they so often did these days—how odd it was that he wasn't attracted to her, although it was always Jack who complained about this, and Ellini who tried to make him feel better, which seemed like the wrong way round.

"I bet this happens all the time with women, doesn't it?" he said, drumming his fingers on the table in the Faculty Lounge. "You meet a man, and he's just perfect. He makes you laugh, he understands you, and he doesn't annoy you—not even in that tiny, inevitable way that best friends can annoy each other. But you're not attracted to him, and so you're torn."

"And that can never happen to a man?"

"Oh, almost all of it can happen to a man," Jack conceded. "But the ending's different. We meet women who are perfect for us but who we aren't attracted to, and we're not torn. We just go home with the idiotic blonde we are attracted to. It doesn't even occur to us that there was a choice."

Ellini laughed faintly. She was standing by the table, touching the varnish with the tips of her gloved hands, as though she couldn't decide whether to stay or go.

"Of course," he went on, "When the love wears off, I suppose some men stay with women they're not attracted to, instead of going out and getting themselves a mistress, because they're old and tired, and it's easier than starting again." He broke off, because Ellini was laughing again. "I'm just hypothesizing, you understand. I've never been there myself, but that seems to be the way it happens. However, I can't do it. I may get old, but I never get tired. That's my curse."

"It's a pretty good one, as curses go."

Jack sighed. "Please don't implore me to have perspective when I'm complaining, mouse. It puts me off."

She giggled and lapsed into silence, staring at him with mischievous eyes that put him off even more.

"Where was I? Oh, yes. The annoying thing is, there's nothing wrong with you." He grabbed her waist and lifted her onto the table, so that her face was level with his. Then he lifted her chin and examined her critically. It didn't help that she was giggling the whole time. "Nice hair, good teeth, no spots, reasonable-sized breasts..."

"Oh, reasonable-sized, are they, now?"

"You've improved on me," said Jack sniffily. "But not enough."

"Don't worry," she said, with a kind of wide-eyed, childish simplicity. "I'm going to be gone soon anyway."

Jack rolled his eyes but didn't rise to the temptation of reprimanding her.

"It's all right," she insisted. "I don't mind."

"Of course you don't mind! You're not right in the head!" He gave her a sulky prod to the shoulder. "It's another one of the things I like about you."