“If I’d taken the plane,” Katharine said, “the decision would be four days in the past now. I’d be used to it, whatever it was.”
“If you’d taken the plane,” I said, “I’d be driving around New York now feeling uneasy, thinking I’d missed something and not knowing what it was.”
Katharine looked stricken. “Say something funny,” she said. “Quick.”
“I just did.”
42
A Holiday Inn restaurant with unshrouded windows! We sat by one, looking out at the tumbling tiny Virgin River while the Muzak doggedly chewed and swallowed Scatterbrain: “STILL it’s CHAR ming CHAT ter SCAT ter BRAIN.”
During the meal Katharine talked about Barry: “We were at dinner once, in Los Angeles, and a girl came over to the table, one of his patients that he hadn’t seen for a couple of years. She was very tall and slender, with those great heaps of blonde hair that I envy so much, and she had an absolutely perfect, absolutely blank face. It was just a collection of perfect face parts all put together exactly right, with no lines and no personality and no sense that there was anybody at all inside there.”
“A store window dummy,” I suggested.
“Worse. Store window dummies are hard, the flesh isn’t real. This was like a marvelous recreation in lifelike rubberized plastic. And you know what she said?”
“It spoke?”
“It spoke. It said, ‘Doctor, you brought out the real me.’ ”
I laughed, and Katharine pointed at me. “That’s right. The only reaction is to laugh. Sitting there at that table, right in front of her when she said it, I still had to smile, and cover my mouth with my hand. But Barry didn’t laugh.”
“Well, no, he couldn’t.”
“But he didn’t afterward either. He thanked her very solemnly, and told her she was one of his most beautiful creations, and when she left I made some smart-aleck remark—”
“You?”
She grinned. “You might not believe it, Tom, but I can be actually caustic at times. Anyway, I said something or other, and Barry said, ‘But she’s telling the truth, I did bring out the real her. She used to be a very pretty girl,’ he said, ‘but what she wanted to be was anonymous. She’s a frightened empty girl with nothing in her head, but she used to look as though she might be interesting in some way. It made her miserable. Now everybody knows she’s an empty beautiful creature, and there are people who value her for that, and she’s much happier.’ He said he counted her among his finest accomplishments.”
“Ah hah.”
“The point is, he has so much understanding. I can be difficult at times, I know I can, and Barry surely knows it, but he never never misunderstands me. He always knows what I mean, even when I’m completely wrongheaded.”
“Katharine,” I said, “you keep arguing the man’s good points, as though that was an issue, but of course it isn’t. What’s right with Barry was established a long time ago. The question that’s left is, what’s wrong with you.”
She looked very troubled. “Yes, that is it, I know it is. But I keep running away from the tough question and answering the easy question all over again. So what is wrong with me? Am I afraid of perfection?”
“You’ve never been afraid of me.”
“Then that can’t be it,” she acknowledged. “Come on, Tom, you’ve see me in inaction for the last five days. What’s my problem?”
“Your problem is,” I said, “you don’t want to marry Mister Right.”
“Well, that’s succinct.” She thought about it, then said, “And it’s correct, too. Barry is Mister Right, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to let him go. But at the same time, I can’t bring myself to marry him.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. But I have to know by sometime tomorrow. And, Tom,” she said, very firmly, “I’ll tell you one decision I’ve come to, and I’ll stick by it, and that’s a promise. And you know me and promises.”
“Yes, I do. What’s the decision?”
“When I see Barry tomorrow, if I still don’t have any sensible reason for saying no, I’m going to say yes.”
“Ah hah.”
“I want to say yes anyway, and part of me does understand that all of this is just foolishness, so if this idiot brain inside my head doesn’t come up with something pretty compelling by the time we reach Los Angeles, I’m going to make the leap.”
“Well,” I said, “I have always wanted to be a bridesmaid. How would you and Barry like to take a honeymoon cab ride to New York?”
“That’s not funny,” she said. And she meant it.
43
We were crossing the lobby after dinner, and a tall man in a light blue sports jacket and gray slacks was checking in at the desk. He turned, and Katharine gasped and said, “Oh, my God!” And I knew.
He saw us and walked in our direction, smiling. As he approached, I said quietly to Katharine, “He doesn’t look much like his picture.”
He was, in fact, more handsome than the picture, and taller than I’d supposed. He was one of those men with a calmly self-confident walk; you knew he would always be modest, and always be capable of dealing with the situation. He came up to us with a happy but slightly apologetic grin on his face, saying, “Katharine, you’re just going to have to forgive me. I decided I couldn’t wait another day to see you.” Turning to me, he extended his hand and his smile and said, “You must be Tom.”
“And you absolutely have to be Barry.”
We exchanged a brief solid handshake and he said, with some amusement, “You aren’t exactly what I expected.”
“On the other hand, you’re precisely what I expected. Katharine has spent the last five days describing your perfections.”
He studied me a few seconds, to see if I was pulling his leg, but I wasn’t; when he’d reassured himself he said, “Katharine keeps telling me how wonderful I am, too. Unfortunately, it’s mostly over the long-distance phone. By the way, you didn’t stop at the first Holiday Inn on the Nevada side.”
“The sun was still fairly high,” I explained, “and I still felt fresh, so we did some more miles. I had no idea we were meeting.”
“Neither did I.” Explaining more to Katharine than me, he said, “But after the phone call I started thinking, and I just couldn’t wait anymore. So I took a plane to Vegas, and rented a car, and drove on up. I’ve spent the last hour checking parking lots for a New York cab.”
“This isn’t fair, Barry,” Katharine said. Her voice sounded strained. “I told you I’d make my mind up by Los Angeles, and that won’t be until tomorrow.”
“I’m not here asking for answers, honey,” he told her. “I just wanted to be around you, that’s all. If you’d like to talk anything over with me, I’m here and I’m available. If not, that’s up to you, and I guarantee you right now I won’t press for an answer until we’re actually in Westwood.”
“Barry,” she said, “tell me the truth. Do you have it in the back of your mind, here we are in Nevada anyway, we could get married right now and not have to go through the whole round trip, all the way to Los Angeles and then back here and then back there again?”
“Definitely not,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I do have in mind, though. The plane I chartered this afternoon; I talked to the pilot, and he could fly us to Vegas the day after tomorrow and then fly us right back to Los Angeles again.” Grinning, he said, “You won’t mind a plane ride after you make your decision, will you?”