Had that been Eileen? Possibly, but I couldn’t be sure, and when a minute later the entire door opened, revealing a dim wicker-bedecked interior and releasing a fall of tomblike air, the person who gestured gracelessly at me to enter, while saying, “Come on in,” was puffy-face again.
“Thank you.” Stepping from one tile pattern to another, I entered the house, with its cold dead air and its gauzy gray illumination, and my perspiration-soaked robe immediately froze solid.
Puffy-face closed the door and extended a puffy hand to me. Since he was wearing nothing but an open white terrycloth jacket, a skimpy red bathing suit and pink rubber shower clogs, I could see that he was puffy all over, a tall young man who had gone completely to seed twenty years ahead of schedule. “The name’s McGadgett,” he claimed. “Neal McGadgett.”
“Brother Benedict,” I repeated, and accepted the handshake. Within the puffiness, his hand was strong.
“Eileen’ll be out in a minute,” he said. He seemed neither hostile nor friendly, but merely cloaking impersonal curiosity. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Coke?”
I was beginning to shiver inside my cold robe. “Coffee would be fine,” I said. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“No trouble,” he said, with a shrug. “Sit down.” And he went away through an arched doorway in the far end of the room, calling out, “Sheila! One more coffee!” Then he leaned back into the room: “How do you take it?”
I told him regular, he bellowed the information to Sheila, and I was left alone. Settling myself into the nearest wicker chair, trying to keep the colder and wetter parts of my robe from touching my body, I looked around at a large bare-looking room which seemed to have been furnished more for low-maintenance functionalism than for either personal style or general appearance. Airline posters were tacked to the walls, there were no personal knickknacks on the small tables scattered among the wicker chairs, and the air-conditioner covering me with its icy breath had a blunt gray-metal facade. So this must be a rented house, rather than a place owned by Eileen or one of her friends. I don’t know why that should have made any difference, but for some reason it increased my discomfort to know I would be meeting with her in a Travelers’ way-station rather than a home; anyone’s home.
A door in the side wall suddenly opened and Eileen walked out, barefoot and wearing a pale blue knee-length robe. She gave me a brooding troubled look, then turned away to close the door behind her, and when she faced me again she’d shifted to the old amused expression. But I didn’t believe it.
Walking toward me, she said, “Well. Fancy meeting you here.”
I got to my feet, unable to decide whether my face wanted to smile or to be solemn. I left it to its own devices, so I suppose it looked seasick, which is the way I felt. “I’m as surprised as you are,” I said.
“Sit down, sit down. Are they getting us coffee?”
“I think so, yes.”
We sat in wicker chairs at right angles to one another, and she said, “I thought you people didn’t believe in travel.”
“Only when necessary,” I said.
“Is this trip necessary?” She grinned but it was still the mask.
“You told me you could help us save the monastery,” I reminded her.
“Did I?” With half a grin still clinging to her lips she faced me for a few seconds, then looked away.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
Her eyes snapped back to mine, and she leaned forward, suddenly intense, and suddenly very angry. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your goddam mouth, would it?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’ve got the hots for me, you son of a bitch, and you know it.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What?”
“I said yes.”
“Yes? That’s all, just yes?”
“I haven’t been able to think straight since I met you,” I said. “But that isn’t—”
“You mean you love me?” She thrust that out as fiercely as if it were a javelin.
“Love you? I think I am you,” I said. “Some broken-off piece of you, trying to get home.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Look at you, dressed in that robe, talking to me like that. You’re a monk.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I told her.
“Then why don’t you get out of my life?”
“Don’t you think I want to?” We were arguing all at once, we were glaring fiercely at one another, and yet I could feel an inane smile trembling about my lips, straining to reveal itself. Although I was hugely angry, enraged at this stupid girl for turning me into such a bewildered silly wreck, I knew somehow it wasn’t really anger I felt at all. My brain was full of dammed-up emotions, contradictory and embarrassing and even frightening, and anger was simply the only way to let them all out.
And it was the same with Eileen. I could see that and sense it, the same relieved smile struggling to show itself on her lips, and (God help me) I rejoiced in the knowledge. Rejoiced angrily, of course.
She was saying, “You’re lousing up my life, do you know that?”
“Well,” I said, “you’re doing the same thing to me. And I was happy in my life.”
She ducked her head, the better to glare at me. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning you were unhappy,” I told her. “Any fool could see that.”
“Is that what you came down here for, to tell me I’m unhappy?” The joy of anger had drained out of her now, and she seemed on the brink of angry tears.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t want—”
“What are you here for anyway? Who asked for you?”
“The monas—”
“Oh, shut up about that stupid monastery!”
“All right,” I said, and grabbed the lapel of her robe to yank her close, and when McGadgett came in to announce breakfast the girl in the blue bathrobe was being kissed by the runaway monk.
The tall and irritable blonde wielding the spatula in the kitchen was introduced as Sheila Foney, “Neal’s girl.” Neal’s girl; meaning that Neal was not Eileen’s young man. And while there were four places set for breakfast, one of them had a certain indefinable air of afterthought to it, and I wasn’t at all surprised when that one turned out to be my place. So there were no occupants of the house other than these three, Eileen and Neal and Neal’s girl, and I was a fourth wheel, not a fifth.
That had suddenly become very important to me. Instinctively and self-protectively I recoiled from contemplation of what that kissing scene in the living room had actually meant, and remained for as long as I could at the level of bewildered delight: happy that I had kissed her, happy that she had no boyfriend here. There was no possible way to think about my future, so I wallowed in the pleasures of the present.
Neal’s girl, Sheila Foney, was in a mood as foul as mine was fair, though it seemed mostly a personality trait and not directed at anyone present. She stamped around like somebody who’s just been insulted by a bus driver, and she was far too caught up in the grievances of her own life to take much notice of a robed and cowled monk abruptly at her table. McGadgett, on the other hand, ignored his girlfriend’s grouchiness and thought Eileen and me both very humorous. While he shoveled in great quantities of scrambled egg, fried sausage and toasted English muffin, he kept giving us sidelong smirks of confederacy, as though we were all conspirators together.
As for Eileen, she seemed mainly embarrassed. She avoided my gaze most of the time, acting calm and unruffled, as though determined to maintain her dignity in the face of some silly humiliation, but when perchance our eyes did meet she blushed and became suddenly flustered and awkward and at the same time soft, as though she were melting from within.