She wanted so badly for it to have been good, for the words to be true and the touching to be true, even if for a few moments. Her body longed for that, and her body longs for that now, she feels a terrible scrabbling warmth come over her and she pulls at her little black dress, pulls at it from just below her hips, she pulls it up and off her and she unclasps her bra and sloughs it off and she slides her panties down her legs and steps from them and she is naked. She is as naked as she feels inside. She sat on the side of this bed only a few months ago and she told Michael what she had done. She could not bear to continue to sleep next to him and wake next to him and she could not bear to admire the churn and crackle of his mind and she could not bear his silences with that interstate motel room a secret. Because it happened, because it existed, because the fact of it went to bed with her and woke with her and it listened with her and it longed with her, and she had to put it outside of herself no matter what. So she sat on this bed, and he was standing between her and the French windows, and the two of them had just arrived from dinner at Galatoire’s, and she told him there was something she had to say and he squares around to face her and she says there is this terrible stupid thing she has done, and she tells him, and he keeps his eyes steady on her as she speaks, even as she tells it all, tells him the whole secret, and his face does not change, just as it does not change whenever she needs to know if he loves her, and she understands what is happening, she understands, and it spreads in her as a slow undulation of intense heat, and he says, “So it’s done?” and his voice is flat, even as it clarifies—“Our marriage?”—and his eyes show nothing and the nothing of them suddenly quickens the heat in her, backdrafts words into her head and an impulse into her hands, she could fly at him and claw at him and cry out at him now, but she won’t, she was the one in the motel room, that was her, she did this, but she is wildly angry at him even so and she can’t say No it’s not done and she can’t say Yes it is. She says, “Is it?” and it’s the right thing to say because if he says Please darling no it can’t be, it’s over with you and this man isn’t it? I can forgive you if you only say you want to stay with me: if he says that, then it will be the same as saying I love you and she can hold on to those words forever and everything will be all right, everything will be better than it’s ever been. But he says nothing. He turns his back abruptly on her and he moves to the French windows and he stands there, and from beyond him, from across the rooftops of the Quarter, from beside the river, comes the cry of a train. And after a long moment, and very low, so low she can only barely hear him, he says, “It always surprises me to hear a train whistle in the Quarter.” And she says nothing. And he says nothing more. The flames have flared and died and she waits for whatever is next, and he is not moving, and she lowers her face, unable even to look at the back of him now, and she waits. Until, at last, she senses him turn. And she looks into his face. And it is blank. It is utterly blank. And she knows it’s done.
And unaware of anything but the end of her marriage playing once more in her head, Kelly has moved now to the French windows, has pressed herself against the balustrade, and she looks out onto the moonlit rooftops, but she does not see them, all she sees is Michael’s face, impassive, and even that is fading from her mind, and it is leaving nothing behind, and she is utterly unaware of what is below her: in the pool, the young couple in their improvised swimsuits standing up to their chests in water, facing each other, his hands around her waist, her hands on his shoulders, and they have stopped joking about what they are doing and they are quiet and looking at each other and smelling the chlorine of the pool and the young woman is thinking that the smell of chlorine will never be the same again and she lifts her face to the moon overhead, and though it is not yet full, it is very bright, and her eyes drift from the moon and she sees a woman standing in her open French windows three floors above them, and the woman is naked — she is slim and beautiful and she is utterly naked — and the young woman lowers her face to her lover and she motions upward with her chin and they both look at the naked woman in the French windows and they smile, and the young man is thus moved to bring his hands up his lover’s back to the hooks on her bra and he undoes them and she lets him do this, she draws her arms forward and she takes the bra and she drops it away from her onto the surface of the pool, and she and the young man press their bodies together and they kiss, even as Kelly turns and vanishes into her room.
∼
And Michael and Laurie move through the moonlight between the plantation house and their cottage, and her hand is on his arm, and she is setting the pace. A slow pace. She is relishing this walk to their bed, and Michael is keenly aware that the phone on his hip won’t ring now, that this issue will remain unresolved until tomorrow at the very least. He puts his hand on Laurie’s in the crook of his arm and he tries hard to remain in this moment, with this new woman. But instead, he stands before Kelly in the hotel room they know so well and she says, “Michael,” and she rarely uses his name to address him, and she says, “Can we talk?” and with that opening to what she wants to say, he figures he has once again fallen short somehow, probably from his preoccupied mind — and admittedly, even as they have checked into what they think of as their room, in their hotel, in their city, for a long weekend, he has been thinking mostly about a retired Navy captain DUI he’s trying to keep out of jail and get into rehab, and he has no doubt that he has, in effect, ignored Kelly since about the Louisiana border — so he squares around before her and clears his mind and he waits for her typically vague indictment. She is sitting on the bed, and even after he has demonstrably given her his full attention, she hesitates to speak, and he feels uncomfortable standing over her when there is apparently some sort of issue to deal with, and if she’s not going to rise to him, then he should probably sit down beside her on the bed. But before he can, she starts to talk.