— It's all right Mrs Booth please! just leave them!
— Well all right but… she straightened up, — if you need anything… and she got through the door to pause in the kitchen, again in the living room and she was up the stairs running a bath, turned off as abruptly as she'd turned it on, and down the hall past empty bedrooms loosening her blouse, bringing the television screen to life with animated mischief in the lower intestine. She turned it off. Digging under scarves, blouses, lingerie in the top drawer she brought out a manila folder riffling the score or so of hand written pages, crossings out, marginal exclamations, meticulous inserts, brave arrows shearing through whole paragraphs of soured inspiration on to the last of them abandoned at what it might all have been like if her father and mother had never met, if her father had married a schoolteacher, or a chorus girl, instead of the daughter of a stayed Grosse Pointe family, or if her mother, lying silent even now in the cold embrace of a distant nursing home, had met a young writer who…
She was up for the moment it took to find a pen and draw it firmly through young writer who, take up rapidly with man somewhat older, a man with another life already behind him, another woman, even a wife somewhere… his still, sinewed hands and his… hard, irregular features bearing the memory of distant suns, the cool, grey calm of his eyes belying… belying? She found the dictionary under the telephone book, sought for bely and could not find it.
— Mrs Booth?
— Oh! She was up, — yes? His voice came up the stairs to her, sorry for the bother but might he use the telephone? — Yes, yes do! and she caught her eyes in the mirror gone wide with listening, gathered in a frown as all that reached her were yelps from the road below where the boys, when she came to look down, straggled up the hill broadcast flinging something one to another, a shoe of the smallest of them coming on well behind where the mist stayed the day as she'd left it. Then as though listened for herself she reached the telephone and raised it silently, there was only the dial tone, and she placed it as carefully back, exchanging a glance with the mirror which she recovered in arch detail down the hall, bent so close over the bathroom basin that her eyes' dark circles deepened until hidden under daubs of a cream lightener, the fullness of a lip modified, eyelids lined with the faintest of green and the hair punished, drawn, tossed free again before she came down the stairs. He was standing over the kitchen table leafing through the bird book where she'd left it, his apologies revived without a look up, he had to wait for his call to go through he said, something wrong with the circuits.
— Oh. When that happens I just keep dialing, they…
— This is out of the country.
— OK. Oh well sit down then, in the living room? I mean I was just going to make tea… Was there a drink? and yes, scotch would be fine, leafing past plovers, willets, yellowlegs greater and lesser, had anyone been in that room? he asked her abruptly, besides the plumber? — Well no, no. I mean it's been locked, how could we… Not her no, he didn't mean her, but anyone else? the man who showed up at the door, did he come in? — No, he stayed at the door. He put his foot in the door.
— You said he just wanted to see me? didn't ask any questions?
She turned with an empty glass, brushed her hair aside, — He asked me if I was your first redhead… but her smile fell flat against his back already turned for the living room. When she came in, ice clinking the glass in one hand, her cup rattling the saucer in the other, she'd done a nice job on the windows he told her, standing there in the alcove, and something about the ivy, that it needed cutting back, almost knocking the glass from her hand as he reached for it. She steadied her cup and sat down, knees drawn tight on the frayed love seat, — and you did find your mail? It was stuck in the door there, one was from Thailand. It had such beautiful stamps that's why I noticed it.
Thailand? He didn't know anyone in Thailand, — never been there… and he settled back in the wing chair as from long habit.
— Oh. Oh and wait yes I meant to ask, is her name Irene? your wife I mean…? His nod came less in affirmation than the failure to deny it. — Because there've been some calls, someone asking for Irene? And all this furniture that's what I wanted to ask you, the agent said she was coming for it, that all of it's hers but they didn't know when. I mean we have things in storage we'd just want to know ahead of time, all these lovely things it looks like she'd just gone for the day, I just don't want anything to happen to it. That little china dog that was on the mantel it's already broken, Madame Socrate when she was cleaning she broke it right in half, I tried to glue it… He glanced up there from the empty fireplace where he'd been staring, it was something of his he told her, raising his glass, never mind it. — Oh. Well of course we'll pay for it but I meant, your wife I mean do you know when she might come for her things? or where we can reach her to ask? Because if we can't reach you, if you're someplace where we can't reach you you might be there for years, you might be gone for twenty years and, I mean…
He'd crossed an ankle over one knee showing a fine shoe, or what had been, well worn, laced with cracks up the instep. — Twenty years, Mrs Booth?
— Yes well no, no I just meant… He was looking straight at her, she caught the edge of what might almost have become a smile, rattling the cup on the saucer and she raised it, swallowed, — I mean you travel a lot, your work I mean, you have to travel a lot it must be very interesting work and, and exciting wait I'm sorry, I'll get you an ashtray… He'd flicked ashes at the hearth, and she was back to place a clean saucer before him, beside the magazines. — Places like that, she said.
— It's a very old issue, isn't it… He came forward to crush out his cigarette. This piece on the Masai, had she read it?
— Yes it's, I just finished it yes it's fascinating, I mean we subscribe to it but I get so behind… The ring of the phone brought him half out of the chair but she was up again, — No I'll get it… and then, from the kitchen — Mister, Mister McCandless? were you calling Acapulco? What? Hello…? Oh no it's from Edie, yes no but not now operator. I mean could she call again later?
He'd upset his drink when she came back in, standing there over the wet magazines having trouble righting it, trouble it appeared simply getting the glass squared in his hand. — Oh can I help you? what…
— No! It's, it's all right.
— I'm sorry wait… she came with a towel wad from the windows, — it doesn't matter, they're old… wiping down the red ochred hair, the bared teeth and bared chest of the warrior. — He's quite frightening isn't he, looking I mean.
— If you're Bantu.
— If I what?
— They steal cattle. I thought you said you'd read it… He'd paced off to the alcove, turned back to the dining room where he stood looking into the empty corner cupboard there, gripping his glass.
— Oh. Yes it's, I mean sometimes I don't read too carefully… and, up looking where he was looking, — we have some lovely china in storage, some old Quimper I mean it's not really china it would look lovely there but I don't know when she might come for it, Irene I mean? your wife? I mean she has such lovely taste everything, you can see her touch everywhere.
— Want to get this porch painted out here, he said abruptly looking out now at the paint peeling on the columns.
— Yes well we never use it but, I mean if you want to do that for us we'd be…
— I wouldn't be doing it for you Mrs Booth, I'd be doing it for the house… He raised his glass for the last drop in it. — She wanted to take this whole wall out, put in an arch here and glass the whole porch in with all the plants out there, kind of a wintergarden.
— Oh! what a, I mean I've…
— We never did it, he said before he turned away.