She thanked Amai and hurried back to her room. She had noticed, in the mirror, a stain on her collar. Peach juice, probably. Damned old dribbler. She didn't want Noi to come in and find her with drool on the collar.
As the clean shirt went on over her head, she thought, What's so special about Noi?
She fastened the collar-frogs with her left hand, slowly.
Noi was thirty or so, a slight, muscular fellow with a soft voice and alert dark eyes. That's what was special about Noi. It was that simple. Good old sex. She had never been drawn to a fair man or a fat one, or the tall fellows with big biceps, never, not even when she was fourteen and fell in love with every passing fart. Dark, spare, and fiery, that was the recipe. Taviri, of course. This boy wasn't a patch on Taviri for brains, nor even for looks, but there it was: She didn't want him to see her with dribble on her collar and her hair coming undone.
Her thin, grey hair.
Noi came in, just pausing in the open doorway-my God, she hadn't even shut the door while changing her shirt!-She looked at him and saw herself. The old woman.
You could brush your hair and change your shirt, or you could wear last week's shirt and last night's braids, or you could put on cloth of gold and dust your shaven scalp with diamond powder. None of it would make the slightest difference. The old woman would look a little less, or a little more, grotesque.
One keeps oneself neat out of mere decency, mere sanity, awareness of other people.
And finally even that goes, and one dribbles unashamed.
"Good morning," the young man said in his gentle voice.
"Hello, Noi. "
No, by God, it was not out of mere decency. Decency be damned. Because the man she had loved, and to whom her age would not have mattered-because he was dead, must she pretend she had no sex? Must she suppress the truth, like a damned puritan authoritarian? Even six months ago, before the stroke, she had made men look at her and like to look at her; and now, though she could give no pleasure, by God she could please herself.