“Jerome!”
“Veronica!”
She stopped two paces before him and tilted her head. She smiled again. “Jerome.”
He gave his head a little shake. “Veronica.”
He held out his hands, palms up, and she extended hers, palms down. Their fingers touched.
“It’s... it’s almost as if this were a reunion, my dear,” she said. Her voice was soft and pleasant, with none of the unintentional harshness, the lost inflection, the catarrhish tones that often accompany age.
“It is, my sweet. We met long ago, in my dreams.” He surprised himself by the utterance. He had never used that line before, in fact, he had said it completely ad lib, and it did not even have a corny ring to it under the circumstances.
They took a cab into the city, holding hands, talking as freely and easily as if they had known each other for years. She had reserved a room for Jerome at her own hotel, which was not expensive nor was it inexpensive, but quietly comfortable. He felt a certain relief at this, as he tipped the bellboy. Edna had passed away two years ago, and the $30,000 she had left in insurance and property was down to five thousand or so, and Staley was not a man who liked to live on short rations.
He turned, smiling, and took Veronica’s hands. “We shall celebrate tonight in the grand style, my dear!” He looked quickly at his watch. “Can you be ready in an hour?”
“I can be ready in half an hour, Jerome. You have no idea how I’ve looked forward to this!”
He had an idea, but he did not express it. Instead, he showed her to the door, kissed her hand, and began to prepare for a whirlwind courtship.
And it was exactly that. Staley, from experience in depth, knew full well when the moment was right. He knew, in addition, that at the ages he and Veronica had reached passions do not blaze; rather, they simmer. Veronica, by his estimate, was simmering properly at exactly nine-fifteen that evening as they danced. Very quietly, very courteously, very expertly he whispered a marriage proposal into her ear. She accepted, gracefully and demurely.
They were married in a small chapel in a quiet ceremony. Neither had the necessary friends or relatives to warrant a large church wedding, but neither wanted one of those coldly commercial weddings, which Jerome likened to the coupling of two gondola cars in a freight yard, with a. switch engine in attendance.
The young minister finished tying the knot, and as he concluded with the admonition to all men urging them to refrain from putting it asunder, Jerome felt his newest bride’s gentle pressure on his arm.
“I’m so happy, Jerome,” she whispered, smiling up at him radiantly. “I am so very, very happy!”
“And I, my love,” he replied, somewhat astonished at the realization that he truly meant it.
For a while he felt a vague disquiet, wondering at what seemed to be happening to him. But by the time they returned to the hotel, where they had checked out of the two smaller rooms and merged into a larger suite, complete with a kitchenette, the feeling had vanished entirely.
There was a tacit agreement that there would be no carrying of the bride over the threshold, but an iced bottle of champagne awaited them inside, compliments of the hotel management.
As Jerome poured, his thoughts wandered to his last marriage. Edna, broad and square as an ox in a box, had undergone a complete metamorphosis as soon as the nuptial formalities were over. Her facade fell away, the smiling, absurdly coy face became a visage of determination. She had looked on Jerome, literally, as a dispeptic sculptor might regard a faulty block of marble, something highly imperfect, which nonetheless would be hammered and pounded upon until it was shaped to suit. It had been a genuine pleasure for Jerome when the time came to remove Edna. In fact, if the act could have been done twice, he would have done so with alacrity.
“Jerome?”
“Eh?” He turned quickly from the hotel window, where he was re-living Edna’s spectacular six-story plunge, and saw Veronica smiling at him. “Oh, forgive me, my darling,” he said, moving to her. “I was... well, the past will not be done with, will it?”
She looked at him curiously, and then she lifted her champagne. “It will take time. For both of us.”
During the first weeks of his marriage to Veronica, Staley felt as if he were growing younger. There was a spring to his step, his eyes shone with vigor, and whenever Veronica went out alone he found himself waiting expectantly for her return.
When a month had gone by — with the swiftness of a dove — Jerome began to wonder. A month was the longest any of them had lasted, and then — it was Matilda if memory served him correctly — only because he had been stricken with a virus shortly after the wedding and had found it expedient to keep her alive until after his own recovery.
But even as the fifth week came and went, he found that he was not even making plans for Veronica. She seemed more beautiful every day, her attentiveness did not waver, she made no effort at all to change him, and they often held hands, as ingenuously as any young lovers. And her cooking, to borrow from a younger generation, was out of this world. Never — even in the finest restaurants, and Staley had patronized the finest in his time — never had he tasted such chicken timbale.
But he worried, he worried a great deal. One evening as they sat by candlelight in a little Italian place, he gazed at Veronica over his wine glass. His face grew serious.
“Does it ever frighten you? Happiness?”
“Frighten me?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why should happiness frighten one? It should be the opposite.”
He smiled wanly. “Then perhaps it is because I am happier than you.”
Veronica laughed then. “This is a side of you I haven’t seen before, Jerome.” She tilted her head, her eyes twinkling. “Is my young husband beginning to grow old?”
The idea had a sudden novel appeal to him. Perhaps she had just hit on it in a moment of jest. He had always been realist enough to admit to the existence of anything, was never one to. bury his head in the sand, no matter what confronted him. He had often had to cope with the unswerving attitude of older women, the dogged pursuit of the established ways. Perhaps here — with himself — he had failed to recognize it.
“It’s strange, Veronica,” he said. “A man my age, to him any change in the way of life to which he has grown accustomed, even if that change is for the better, is extremely difficult to adapt to.”
She no longer reflected the amusement of a moment before. She simply nodded, sipped her wine, and said, “That’s not exclusively a trait of older men, my dear.”
Time slipped smoothly past, and occasionally Jerome would tell himself, very firmly, that he would do it soon. But tomorrow never seemed to come. This perfect blending of tastes, of likes and dislikes, this rapport that had undeniably existed from that very first letter, was a hard thing to break away from. Oftentimes they seemed to think as one. While listening to music or reading, one of them would make some casual remark, seemingly with no possible relevance to the other’s thoughts. But the thread would be picked up, the idea carried along as if. they had been talking of it for some time.
Yet, Staley’s way of life pulled him in the opposite direction. The spots of the leopard — especially the old leopard — are notoriously difficult to change. Staley knew this. He knew it well, and he knew it applied to him as well as others. From time to time he would try to convince himself that this was some sort of illusion, that his attachment for Veronica was not as strong as it seemed, that he was tiring of her.