“And who do you sound like, Peter?” she said, as if she had him there. “Anyway, I doubt that I’ll see Oscar again after tonight. In his undemonstrative way, he was really angry when he left.” She laughed sadly at the memory. “Will I see you again?”
“Yes.”
“We’re still friends?”
“Why not?”
“You’re very noncommittal, aren’t you? Are you disturbed about Bob calling after eleven like that?”
“A little,” he admitted, giving that much away, next to the couch now, hovering over her, logy with depression — his lethargy like a weight on his chest.
“Don’t be disturbed,” she said gently. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“All right,” he said abruptly, the irony implied. Then he said good night again, not moving, sweating under the weight of his coat. What was he waiting for? (He unbuttoned the coat.)
“Are you disappointed in me?” she asked him.
“No,” he said immediately, disappointed that she had asked. He planned to leave in the next minute, took a step toward the door in preparation.
“Why don’t you take off your coat?” she said, kicking off her shoes, putting her feet up on the couch.
“I’m leaving in a minute,” he said. Still, he was curious, felt compelled to know what he didn’t want to know. “What’s your relationship with Bob Grimes?” he asked.
“I knew you were going to ask that, Peter,” she said, pleased at seeing into him. “You haven’t changed as much as you think.” Her pleasure was too fragile to last. “Whatever I tell you,” she said bitterly, “you probably won’t believe me. You never believe anything I tell you.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. He took another step toward the door, edging his way; yet something held him, some dim quest. “I believe what you tell me,” he said.
“You’re treating me very badly,” she said in a hurt voice. “Do you mean to?”
Guilty, he returned begrudgingly to the sofa; Lois, moving over, made room for him next to her. He took off his coat. “I’m sorry,” he said reflexively, touching her arm. Lois lit a cigarette. They sat for a while without talking, only remotely aware of each other, out of time, as in the frozen moment of a dream. Like old times. Lois was crying. “I’m cold,” she whispered. What was expected of him? He covered her with his coat.
“I’ll sleep on the sofa,” Lois said. “All right? You can have the bed. I’m very shaky, Peter.” She held her hand up to the light to show him. “I’m afraid to be alone.”
Peter said he would stay — how could he refuse her? — but on condition that she take the bed and he the sofa.
They argued briefly over who would have the bed, who the sofa, Peter winning. The sofa. “You’re a man to conjure with,” she said. Old times? Lois poured them both a brandy as a nightcap; Peter drank his dutifully, as though it were good for him.
“Tonight proves,” Lois said, “that Patton’s notions about you were all wrong.”
He felt compromised by her compliment. “Wrong in what way?” he wanted to know.
Lois smiled enigmatically, blotted her eyes with a Kleenex, blew her nose. “I’m happy,” she said, as though it were an answer to his question. “Whenever you want to go to bed, Peter, let me know and I’ll make up the sofa for you.”
“How about now?” he said, yawning, afraid — anticipating the probability — of not being able to sleep.
“Fine,” she said, but made no move to get up, her legs curled under her, firmly established on the sofa.
Sitting next to her, Peter had the notion — what could be clearer? — that whatever the prose between them, the formal self-disguises, they would end up in the same bed. And though he didn’t know why — what difference would it make? — he didn’t want it to happen. Sitting next to Lois on the sofa, her perfume not the one he remembered, he presumed himself without desire. Traces of memory, scenes of love-making he recalled, stung him with nostalgia, but that was something else — not desire. Not love. What did he want from her? What? He wanted — nothing else — to make whole the broken parts of his life, to salvage the failures of the past. And Lois, who had been the deepest of his commitments, had been his greatest failure. He owed her the most of himself. But he wondered — there was no charge for wondering — whether the Lois next to him, so different from his memory of her, was the same Lois he had been married to, in love with, fifteen years before. As a matter of fact she could be no other, but he had yet to discover it for himself. In the secret places where it mattered. He was waiting. Was that compromise? The new Becker, he liked to believe, wanted even more than the old.
And Lois? What did she want from him?
At the moment, she wanted mostly to talk.
“I think we ought to go to bed,” Peter said after a while, meaning sleep — Lois amused at the slip. “We have to go to work in the morning.”
“All right,” she said, “but who’s sounding like Oscar now?” She continued to sit.
Peter got impatient waiting. “I’m very tired,” he said, in case she had forgotten.
She laughed at him. “You’ve really changed, Peter,” she said. “When you were younger you didn’t worry about missing a night of sleep. There was a time we stayed up all night together. Do you remember?”
He didn’t quite, but he recalled vaguely a night they had spent together before their marriage during which — impossible to sleep then with her next to him — they made love almost, it seemed, without stopping until morning. Was that what she had in mind? he wondered. It seemed inconceivable now that he had ever felt so strongly about her, though he knew he had — the recollection itself like a fever. While he was remembering — ashamed of being beaten by his former self — Lois brought sheets, pillow, a pink blanket from the closet, and made the sofa (a Castro Convertible: so easy even a child-woman could open it) into a bed. Peter stood by and watched. Who needed sleep? You waste, sleeping, lying in bed trying to sleep, a third of your life. As a kid, he used to test himself to see how long he could stay awake. At nineteen, he once went five and a half days without sleep, but then got sick afterward and spent a week in bed recuperating — the price of victory.
“Look,” he said when Lois had finished with the bed, “if you want to talk some more, I’m not really tired.” Stifling a yawn.
“Whoever thought you were tired?” she said, kissing him on his cheek. “Good night. See you in the morning, old Peter.” He stood stiffly, acknowledged her affection with a hand shake, wanting to avoid if he could the inevitable. And then, without further ceremony, Lois went to her room — it took him a moment to realize that she had gone. (So much for his presumptions!)
Peter took off his shoes and socks, and before he knew it — wondering what she wanted from him (what could it be?) — he was asleep. In a dream, he met Lois unexpectedly in the bedroom of their old basement apartment-each had come back after all these years, not knowing what to expect, on a nostalgic impulse. The room looked about the same, the walls, newly painted, a slightly darker shade of green — the scars, pockmarks, grease stains all there, preserved by the paint. Lois, in a black dress, a black hat with a veil, looked fine — lovely. They were sitting on the edge of their double bed, on a lump of mattress, solemnly silent, their hands connecting them. Peter wanted to lift the veil to see her face, but Lois said, “No, please. My mother will be here any minute.” Her fingers moved between his, the promise of love in their touch. “Where can we go?” he wanted to know, Lois irresistible beneath the shadow of the veil. Lois shook her head. “Where can we go?” she lamented — in mourning, it seemed, for both of them. Then she kissed him, the veil between them, her breath warm, silken. Love lolled on his tongue like a sip of schnapps. “This time, Lois,” he said, “this time it will be different — I won’t make the same mistakes. I’ve learned a little in fourteen years — not much, a little.” Lois on her back now, her knees up. “Quickly,” she said, “quickly, before my mother gets here and I have to clean the house.” It unnerved him. “Lois,” he said, “all these years and I still love you.” “You talk too much,” she said, opening his pants. “Hurry, for God’s sake.” He tried to lift her veil but he couldn’t reach it — important for him to see her face. “Why are you wasting so much time?” she said. “We only have a few minutes left.” Then, in a soft, yearning voice: “Come home, old Peter. Take me. Come home.” He lifted the veil.