“Yes.”
“What does this mean?” She held the piece of the envelope toward her.
Grace stared at it for a few seconds and then looked at her. “Who wrote this? It looks like a note in school.”
“Tell me what it says,” Natasha demanded.
“It says, ‘I could have loved you.’ ”
She crumpled the piece of paper and dropped it in her purse, then picked up her coffee and blew across the surface of it, feeling the tremor under her heart of the wrath that had seized her. I do not take what has not been given. “Thank you,” she said to Grace, who gave a little shrug and walked away.
Outside, Constance had stood and was stretching her arms into the sun. Constance. The reason for being here at all. Natasha finished the coffee quickly and went out, across the lobby, heading back up to her room. She saw as she passed that the television was on, playing to no one. Talking heads. She stopped, absorbed in spite of herself. The details of the attack were being discussed and analyzed and argued over. There was a scroll now at the bottom of the screen with further information. One of the hijackers had evidently lost heart and gotten on a train to the Midwest, no doubt meaning to lose himself in the vastness of the country. The discussion went on. The airlines losing tremendous amounts of money. The economic damage. Still many people missing, the search going on in the rubble. She couldn’t watch it anymore.
In her room, she took the pieces of the letter and envelope out of her purse and put them in the trash can. Then she went out into the hall to the ice-and-vending space and emptied the trash can into a larger bin there. She returned the can with its sand-filled ashtray to its place, next to the elevator. Back in the room, she lay down with her hands folded over her chest and waited in vain for sleep. She heard Constance in the next room, and then saw the other woman’s shadow out on the balcony.
“You asleep?” Constance called to her.
“No.”
“Want to talk?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“What would we talk about?”
Constance sighed. “Anything.”
Natasha sat around on the edge of the bed facing the window.
“Maybe go down to the beach,” Constance said.
“I don’t want to.”
“We could swim and cool off.”
“You go.”
She came to the opening and looked in. “I’m sorry about before.”
Natasha waited a little. “Forget it.”
“It’s none of my business what you do.”
“Nothing happened, Constance.”
The older woman came into the room and sat at the dressing table opposite the bed. Her gaze trailed down the wall, to the spatter of sand on the rug near the door, where the ashtray trash can had been. “Is that from the beach?”
Natasha hadn’t seen it. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Well,” said her friend. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing is right.”
“But you can’t blame me for thinking it. I mean you were lying there on the sand together and he was on his back and you were leaning over him with your mouth on his. You were going at it like a couple of teenagers.”
She could barely find the breath to speak. “I kissed him, and then he passed out. You should’ve stayed and spied a little more.”
“I wasn’t spying.”
“And what exactly were you doing on the beach all day drunk?”
“Okay, let’s just drop it.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s your business entirely, of course. But you were out there with the notorious Mr. Skinner. The cheater with all the health problems. Did you cheat with Mr. Skinner? You said you’d been down to the beach with several men. What went on, Constance? Or is it that you’re the grown-up and don’t have to explain yourself?”
“Stop this. Right now. Before we say things we can’t take back. And you know nothing happened with that poor browbeaten toad. Or anyone else, either.”
“Well, you say that, but what about those others? The way you told us about going down to the beach with several men was pretty suggestive. So, really, what happened with them?”
“Now you cut this out. Nothing happened.”
“Okay,” Natasha said. “Right. Are we really going to do this?”
“Look. I wasn’t — I wasn’t spying.”
“What was it, then? What do you call it?”
“Okay. I believe you. All right? I’m sorry.”
She was close to screaming at the other, close to saying at the top of her voice what had happened later. She felt the hot urge to do so in the nerves of her throat.
“Really,” Constance said. “It’s none of my business anyway, like I said.”
“You had sand on your back,” said Natasha. “I saw it.”
“Okay, okay. Really. Let’s just stop this, now. Please.”
They were quiet for a long time.
Presently, Constance said, “What will we do today?”
“I don’t want to do anything but sleep. And be away from you.”
“No, now, come on, sweetie.”
Natasha said nothing.
“I said I’m sorry. I am sorry.”
“I’m staying here.”
“All day? You have an extra day. Maybe more.”
“I don’t feel like doing anything else. You do what you want.”
There was another pause. At last, Constance rose and went around into her own room. Natasha drifted on the edge of sleep and woke with a start and then drifted some more. She wanted very badly to be down in sleep. When she stirred, there was silence, no sound from the other side of the wall.
She got out of the bed and moved to the entrance of the balcony, pausing there. She saw the different nuances of blue at the horizon. There were no clouds, no hint of them anywhere. People were sunning themselves and playing in the shallows or sitting in the pockets of shade, picnicking, talking quietly. Two dark men were standing over a lit barbecue, waiting for the flames to die down. The life of the island was proceeding. Life elsewhere was going on. Her native country would honor the dead. The president would make another speech, visiting the ruins, the wreckage of so many assumptions about the world. It was too far away to imagine. She stepped out into the peace of this afternoon in Jamaica, with the sun shining in jade light through the palm fronds, and the air stirring softly, warm tropical breezes that carried the low repeating roar of the sea.
3
During the long train ride to Memphis, Faulk tried to sleep. There was no comfort to be had. Late in the night he made his way to the dining car and asked for a brandy. They had nothing but beer. He drank three beers in iced glasses, though the good clear taste disappeared after the first. He ordered a fourth but didn’t finish it. A young couple entered and took seats at the bar, nodding at him. He paid for the beer and wobbled slowly back to his compartment and lay down. The bed was narrow as a plank, the mattress so thin that he could feel the bands of metal supporting it.
He slept fitfully, the whole compartment pitching back and forth with the motion of the train, town lights gliding past the windows, other trains, seeming impossibly near, flashing by in a speeding instant, bells and blinking red lights at the crossings. The windows were black for a long time. And then they were full of sun, which made it stifling hot in that tight space. He’d lost track of time. He got up and went out and down to the dining car. There were no empty seats. A porter approached him and asked if he wanted to wait. But looking at the packed car with its faces showing the strain of the last two days, he decided that he wasn’t hungry. To be here felt too much like the bad journey down to Washington from New York. A quality of exhaustion hung in the air, the other passengers looking out at the rushing countryside. As he started out of the car a seat opened up near the door. He took it, realizing how tired he was. It was almost as if he collapsed into it. No, he told the porter, he had not decided what he wanted to eat. He asked for black coffee. Gazing out the windows at the countryside south of Cincinnati, he reflected on the fact that he had spent more time on trains now, just in the last two days, than he had spent on any other form of public transportation in his life. And he did not feel safe. And he wanted company. Something of the shock of those burning and collapsing buildings was only now beginning to weigh on him. He looked over at the thickset man across the aisle from him.