Chapter 31 30

30 As soon as Marianne got home, she reached for the zipper at the back, trying to get the crumpled dress off.Just then, the phone rang, and she guessed who it was. "Hello?" she asked. Peter's voice was full of anger. "Marian, where the hell have you been? I'm on the phone everywhere." It can be heard that he has not fully sobered from the wine. "Oh," she said in a nonchalant tone, "I went out. Out for a walk." He couldn't help it. "Damn it, why did you run away without permission? You ruined my whole party. I was looking for you to take pictures with everyone, but you slipped away. Of course, in front of so many guests, I don't want to make a fuss, but I'll be looking for you as soon as they're gone. Your friend Lucy and I drove around town and we've been to your house half a dozen times and we're all in a hurry. Hell, she's a nice guy , not afraid of trouble at all, there are still a few women who don't only care about themselves..."

I knew it must be so, and Marianne thought of Lucy's silver eyelids, and felt a twinge of jealousy. Still, she replied loudly, "Peter, please don't be mad. I was just trying to get out and get some fresh air, and something happened to me, and that's it. There's nothing to be mad about. Everything's fine." "Angry, what do you mean?" he said. "You shouldn't be wandering the streets in the middle of the night, you might get raped. If you have to, God knows it's not the first time, and hell, you have to think for others. You at least You should tell me where you went, your parents hung up the long-distance call, and you didn't take the bus back, they were going crazy, how do you ask me to tell them?"

Oh, yes, she thought, she had forgotten about it. "Well, am I all right?" she said. "But where have you been? As soon as I found out you weren't there, I surreptitiously asked people if I saw you. I gotta tell you, your Prince Charming friend, hell, is his name Trevor or something , tell me a ridiculous story. Who the hell is that guy he's talking about?" "Peter, please stop," she said, "I don't want to talk to you on the phone about things like that." A sudden urge came over her to tell him everything.But what was the use of talking to him, since nothing could be proved, and nothing was decided?So she asked, "What time is it?"

"Two-thirty," he said, not expecting her to ask him such a simple matter, and his tone was not as exasperated as before. "Oh, will you come later? Five-thirty. Come and have tea. We can talk things over." She spoke as softly as she could.She knew she was playing tricks.Even though she hadn't decided what action to take, she felt she was on the verge of it, and she needed some time. "Well, well," he said gruffly, "better if nothing happens." They hung up at the same time. Marianne went into the bedroom, undressed, and went downstairs to take a quick shower.Downstairs it was quiet, and the landlady was probably angry in her dark room, or praying to God that Ainsley would be thundered.

In a state of excitement bordering on rebellion, Marianne purposely did not wipe off the ring of dirt on the rim of the tub. What she needs is a way to express without using words, and she doesn't want to waste words.She wants to use some kind of test to determine the authenticity, which is as straightforward and simple as litmus paper.She dressed—a simple gray sweater would be appropriate, put on her coat, then found her wallet and counted the money in it.She went into the kitchen and sat down at the table to draw up a shopping list, but threw the pencil away after she wrote a few words.She knows exactly what to buy.

She walks unhurriedly between the shelves in the supermarket, pushing unceremoniously in front of the ladies in muskrat coats, pushing aside the children who come out with adults on Saturdays, and picking what to buy from the shelves. thing.Her vision became clearer and clearer.Eggs, flour, lemons for seasoning, sugar, icing sugar, vanilla, salt, food coloring, she was going to buy everything again instead of what she had at home.Chocolate - no, cocoa is better.A glass tube filled with silver discs, three stacked plastic bowls, teaspoons, aluminum spouts for cake patterns, and cake tins.Fortunately, she thought, everything is available in supermarkets these days.After paying, she took the shopping paper bag and walked to the residence.

Is it better to make a loose cake or a white cake?she thought.Finally decided to make muffin cakes.Muffin cakes fit the bill better. She turns on the oven.There are no skin stains on the cooker in the kitchen, mainly because they have rarely used it recently.She put on her apron and drenched the new bowls and other utensils under the tap, but left the dirty dishes alone.Those will wait until later.She has no time at the moment.After drying these things with a cloth, she began to crack the shells and separate the yolks from the whites, thinking almost nothing but what she was doing.Then beat eggs, mix flour, and filter, carefully paying attention to the number of times and the thickness of the batter.It takes skill to make loose cakes.She poured the batter into the molds and scraped the inside with a fork sideways, breaking the big air bubbles.She was almost humming with joy when she put the mold in the oven.

She hasn't made a cake for a long time. While the cake was baking in the oven, she washed the dishes again and mixed the syrup.She made regular butter syrup, which worked best.Then she divided the syrup into three bowls, the largest serving was white, the second bowl she added some red food coloring she had just bought to make it a darker pink, She added some cocoa powder to the three bowls and stirred them until they became dark brown. What am I going to put her on later?She thought after doing these things.I have to go wash some dishes. So she took out one from the bottom of the stack of plates in the sink, took it under the faucet and scrubbed and washed it. It took a lot of dish soap to wash off the smudges that had condensed on it.

She tasted the cake and it was ready.She took the cake out of the oven and turned it over to cool it down a bit. Ainsley was not at home, which pleased her: she didn't want to be disturbed by what she was going to do next.In fact, Ainsley probably never came home at all.Her green dress was nowhere to be seen.In her room there was a suitcase spread out on the bed, which must have been left by her last night.Some bits and pieces of dust from the room fell into the box, as if carried in by a vortex.Marianne wondered as she worked, Ainsley had so many messy things, how could she manage to fit them all into the limited number of rectangular suitcases.

While the cake was cooling on one side, she went into the bedroom and brushed her hair.She pulled her hair back, pinned it, and straightened the curls the barber had made.She was light-headed, almost dizzy, which must have been caused by lack of sleep and lack of food.She smiled into the mirror, showing her teeth. The cake cools slowly, but she doesn't want to put it in the refrigerator to cool, that would pick up the flavors.She took the cake out of the mold and put it on a clean plate, then opened the kitchen window and put the plate on the snow-covered window sill.She knew not to roll the icing on the cake while it was hot, or the sugar would melt in a mess.

She wondered what time it was.She had left the watch on the dresser before going out last night, but it had stopped by now.She didn't want to turn on Ainsley's transistor radio, lest it be too loud and distracting.She's already getting a little nervous.There's a number to call and ask the time...but she has to hurry anyway. She took the cake off the window sill, felt it, felt that it was almost cool, and put the plate on the kitchen table.Then she moved her hands.She first used two sticks to divide the cake into two, and turned half of it sideways on the plate.She scooped out a small piece of cake and made a head out of it, then pinched the rest to form a waist.The other half she stretched into strips to make arms and legs.The sponge cake is soft and tough, and it is easy to shape into various shapes.She glued the parts together with white syrup, and the rest of the syrup was poured over the whole body.The body is a little bumpy and the skin has too much cake crumbs, but that's okay.She inserted toothpicks into the feet and ankles for reinforcement. In this way, she finished a naked body.It looked kind of indecent, fluffy and syrupy, lying on a plate with no features.Now it was time to dress him, filling aluminum nozzles with bright pink syrup and first adding a bikini swimsuit, but she thought it was too revealing, so she added color to its belly as well.This made it a normal swimsuit, but she still didn't like it, so she continued to add color, filling it from top to bottom, and the result was a poor dress.On the spur of the moment she added lace around its neck and the hem of its skirt.She also drew a plump smiling mouth and a pair of red shoes to match it.Finally, five more pink nails were painted on each of the two strange hands. This humanoid cake has no hair, no eyes, only a mouth, which looks very strange.She cleaned the aluminum spout and added chocolate syrup to it.She drew a nose and two big eyes, and added many eyelashes and two eyebrows to the eyes.To accentuate the silhouette, she drew a dividing line between the legs, while also drawing black lines between the arms and the torso.Drawing the hair took a lot of time, as there were intricate clumps of curls that piled high on top of the head before falling down the shoulders. The eye sockets are still empty.She decided to use green—you can also use red or yellow, and she bought these three pigments—and she picked the green color with a toothpick to fill in the eye socket. Then just add the silver flakes.She glued one in each eye as eyeballs.She used the other discs as embellishments on the pink skirt, and stuck a few pieces on her hair.Now the woman looked like a graceful china doll in an antique shop.For a moment, she regretted that she didn't buy a few birthday candles, but on second thought, if she bought candles, where should she put them?There is no place left.The statue is finished. This piece of hers holds its head up, its doll-like face staring blankly at her, save for a gleam of intelligence in the silver discs of its green eyes.She was full of joy while making the cake, but now looking at it, she was lost in thought.She has spent a lot of effort on this woman, what kind of result will she get? "You look delicious," she told her. "It's appetizing. That's what you've got; you're something to eat?" Her stomach twitched at the thought of food.She felt a pang of sympathy for her own work, but now there was nothing she could do about it, her fate was sealed.At this moment, Peter's footsteps were heard on the stairs. Suddenly, Marianne suddenly felt that she was so stupid. Didn't her behavior look too childish and inappropriate in the eyes of a sane bystander?What game is she playing?But that's not the problem, she told herself nervously, pushing back a lock of hair.But if Peter thought it was all nonsense, she would believe him, she would agree with him about himself, he would laugh, and they would sit down and have a good cup of tea. Peter's head poked out from the landing and she gave him a stern smile.His brows were furrowed and his jaw was raised, indicating that he was still angry.He was dressed to suit the mood, too, a well-fitting but unapproachably rigid suit, but with a scrolled tie of a dark fuchsia. "Hey, what's going on..." He asked immediately. "Peter, why don't you come in and sit down. I'll show you something that you won't think of. Then we can talk if you like." She smiled at him again. He was stunned, and his frown relaxed; he must have expected her to stammer an apology.But he followed her advice and went into the living room.She remained standing in the doorway for a moment, looking almost tenderly from behind as his head rested on the couch.Now that she had seen him again, Peter in person, as real as ever, last night's terror had turned into foolish hysteria, and the meeting with Duncan a folly, an escape; I can hardly remember what he looked like.Peter wasn't an enemy after all, he was just a normal person living a normal life like most of the others.She wanted to touch his neck and tell him he shouldn't be angry and everything would be fine.It was Duncan who was mentally abnormal. There was something wrong with his shoulder, though.He must have been sitting with his arms folded across his chest.On the other side of this head could be anyone else's face.These people wear real clothes and have real bodies: the ones in the papers, the ones who haven't made much of a name yet, leaning against an upstairs window waiting for a chance to take a shot; you walk past them every day on the street.It wasn't hard to see him as a normal, harmless figure in the afternoon, but that didn't change the nature of the matter.There is a price to be paid for such an interpretation of reality, which is to test whether an alternative account is true. She went into the kitchen and came out with the tray in both hands; she was holding it carefully, almost reverently, as if she were holding some religious relic, or something that had been placed on a velvet cushion in some play. icon or crown.She knelt down and put the plate on the coffee table in front of Peter. "You've been trying to destroy me, haven't you?" she said. "You've been trying to assimilate me. But I've made a double for you, and you'll like it better. That's what you're after, right? Let me get you a fork," she continued Baba added a sentence. Peter looked at the cake, then at her face, and then back to the cake.She is not smiling. He was dumbfounded, obviously he didn't think she was messing around. He withdrew quickly, and they did not exchange a word at all; he seemed embarrassed, and was in such a hurry to go that he refused even to take a sip of his tea.After he was gone, she stood looking down at the little man.Well Peter didn't eat it.As a symbol, it completely and utterly fails.Its silver eyes looked at her with a secret, mocking expression, but it was also quite delicious. Suddenly she felt hungry.Hungry as hell.After all, it's just a cake.She took the plate, put it on the kitchen table, and found a fork. "I'll eat the legs first," she decided. She considered the taste of the first bite.She was able to taste, chew and swallow food again, which seemed a bit odd, but it was wonderful.Yes, she judged in her mind; it's a pity that the lemons are a little less. But while her mouth was busy eating, she felt a pang of nostalgia for Peter again, like seeing an outdated fashion now on a Salvation Army bargain hanger. same mood.She could not help picturing him, as she seemed to see him standing pompously dressed, with a whiskey glass in his hand, in an elegantly furnished drawing room with chandeliers and draperies behind him; Wearing a blindfold, one foot rests on the head of a stuffed lion.Under one arm he carried a revolver on a leash.The imaginary picture is bordered by a circle of golden scrolls, with a thumbtack pressed above Peter's left ear.She licks her fork thoughtfully.He will surely succeed. When the leg was half eaten, she heard someone coming upstairs, the footsteps of two people.Then Ainsley was in the kitchen doorway, behind her the shaggy head of Fish Smythe.Ainsley was still wearing the turquoise dress, but the effect of wearing it for a long time was much worse.Her own situation was much worse: her face was very haggard, and it had only been twenty-four hours, and her stomach seemed to be significantly bigger. "Hi," Marianne greeted them, waving a fork.She forked another piece of pink thigh and sent it to her mouth. As soon as Fish reached the landing, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, but Ainsley looked at her seriously. "Marian, what are you eating?" She came closer. "A woman, a woman made of cake?" She gave Marianne a suspicious look. Marianne chewed and swallowed. "Would you like something?" she asked. "It's delicious. I just made it this afternoon." Ainsley's mouth moved like a fish, as if she wanted to swallow the inner meaning of everything in front of her. "Marian!" she cried at last, startled. "You are refusing to recognize your female identity!" Marianne stopped talking, staring at Ainsley intently.Ainsley was looking at her too, her hair stuck over her eyes, her face almost rigid with hurt concern.How could she put on such a sad face and look so serious?She was almost as serious as the landlady. Marianne's eyes fell to the plate again.The foot was gone, but the woman was still there, smiling blankly. "Nonsense," she said. "It's just a cake," she said, sticking the fork in and cutting the head cleanly off the torso.