Ninety-Three Million Miles Away: Short Story by Barbara Gowdy Page A

plate-glass windows, this was the only direct light they got. Deciding to make use of it while it lasted, she moved her easel, chair and mirror closer to the window. Then she took off her housecoat and pyjamas.
    For a few moments she stood there looking at herself, wondering what it was that had inspired the sketch. Today she was disposed to seeing herself as not bad, overall. As far as certain specifics went, though, as to whether her breasts were small, for instance, or her eyes close together, she remained in the dark.
    Did other people find her looks ambiguous? Claude was always calling her beautiful, except that the way he put it—”You’re beautiful to me” or “I think you’re beautiful”—made it sound as if she should understand that his taste in women was unconventional. Her only boyfriend before Claude, a guy called Roger, told her she was great but never said how exactly. When they had sex, Roger liked to hold the base of his penis and watch it going in and out of her. Once, he said that there were days he got so horny at the office, his pencil turned him on. (She felt it should have been his pencil sharpener.)
    Maybe she was one of those people who are more attractive when they’re animated, she thought. She gave it a try. She smiled and tossed her head, she tucked her hair behind her ears. She covered her breasts with her hands. Down her cleavage a drop of sweat slid haltingly, a sensation like the tip of a tongue. She circled her palms until her nipples hardened. She imagined a man’s hands … not Claude’s—a man’s hands not attached to any particular man. She looked out the window.
    In the apartment across from her she saw a man.
    She leapt to one side, behind the drapes. Her heart pounded violently, as if something had thundered by. She stood there hugging herself. The drapes smelled bitter, cabbagey. Her right hand cupped her left breast, which felt like her heart because her pulse was in it.
    After a moment she realized that she had started circling both of her palms on her nipples again. She stopped, astonished, then went on doing it but with the same skeptical thrill she used to get when she knew it wasn’t
her
moving the Ouija board. And then it was her feet that were moving involuntarily, taking her from behind the drapes into a preternatural brightness.
    She went to the easel, picked up a brush and the palette and began to mix a skin colour. She didn’t look at the window or at the mirror. She had the tranced sensation of being at the edge of a cliff. Her first strokes dripped, so she switched to dabbing at the canvas, producing what started to resemble feathers. Paint splashed on her own skin but she ignored it and went on dabbing, layer on layer until she lost the direct sun. Then she wet a rag in the turpentine and wiped her hands and her breasts and stomach.
    She thought about the sun. That it is ninety-three million miles away and that its fuel supply will last another five billion years. Instead of thinking about the man who was watching her, she tried to recall a solar chart she had memorized a couple of years ago.
    The surface temperature is six thousand degrees Fahrenheit, she told herself. Double that number and you have how many times bigger the surface of the sun is compared to the surface of the earth. Except that because the sun is a ball of hot gas, it actually has no surface.
    When she had rubbed the paint off, she went into the kitchen to wash away the turpentine with soap and water. Theman’s eyes tracked her. She didn’t have to glance at the window for confirmation. She switched on the light above the sink, soaped the dishcloth and began to wipe her skin. There was no reason to clean her arms, but she lifted each one and wiped the cloth over it. She wiped her breasts. She seemed to share in his scrutiny, as if she were looking at herself through his eyes. From his perspective she was able to see her physical self very clearly—her shiny, red-highlighted hair, her