When she was dressed, she went downstairs and out onto the terrace and stood by the balustrade looking down across the beach to the ocean. The hard glitter of the day was gone, and the air was softening and darkening, and the water beyond the beach was a vast shadow shifting uneasily in the cavities of the earth. She was cold, very cold, but the coldness was something that originated inwardly and had nothing to do with the descent of the sun, and was nothing that she could do anything about, except, perhaps, to get a drink as soon as possible. She did not go into the bar, however, but remained standing by the balustrade until Avery came up from behind and stood beside her.
“Here you are,” he said.
“Yes. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Am I late?”
“No. I don’t think so. I came down early.”
“Would you like to have dinner?”
“I’m not hungry. I’m sure I couldn’t eat a thing. Don’t let me interfere with your own dinner, though.”
“It’s all right. I’m not hungry, either.”
“Really? I’ll go and sit with you if you wish.”
“No, really. I’m not hungry at all. I’d prefer not to eat.”
“In that case, I would like a drink.”
“How would you like to go someplace different? I have been to a place I liked. A small place. It’s quieter.”
“All right. But first I would like one for the road.”
“Fine. That’s a good idea.”
They went into the bar and had a drink and then went out into the lobby and waited until the Caddy was brought around. In the Caddy, they started for the other place he’d been to and liked. She sat in her corner of the seat and said nothing and reminded herself over and over that she had made a promise to Carl and that it was necessary for her own sake, as well as for the sake of abstract ethics, to keep the promise. The drink she’d just had was of some value in helping her face this necessity, but it was inadequate on the whole and wouldn’t last and would soon need the assistance of another.
They came to the place they were going to, and it was small, as he’d said. And as he’d said, quiet. There were some tables and chairs and half a dozen booths and a bartender and a waitress and very little light. It was obviously a place to go and drink and talk if you wanted to, and if you had anything in mind besides drinking and talking, it was much better to go someplace else. They went in and got across from each other in a booth and began drinking, and pretty soon they began talking. “Have you talked to Carl?” he said.
“At lunch.”
“Not since then?”
“No,” she lied. “Not since lunch.”
“I saw him on the terrace of the hotel this afternoon. Late. I had just come up from the beach. He told me you are returning north this Saturday.”
“Yes. He wants to be home by Christmas.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I would like to stay here all winter.”
“In Miami?”
“Not particularly in Miami. Somewhere in the sun and the warmth. I would like never to have to live in the cold again.”
“I’m going to Mexico City soon. Did you know that?”
“Carl may have mentioned it. I don’t remember.”
“Have you ever been in Mexico City?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t get as warm there as it does in Miami, but on the other hand it doesn’t get cold, either. The nights are cool, and a topcoat is necessary, but the days are pleasant.”
“You sound as if you’d been there.”
“I was there once. A long time ago.”
“Did you see a bullfight?”
“No. I was only a child. All I can remember is Chapultepec Park.”
“I don’t think I’d want to see a bullfight.”
“I guess they’re pretty brutal.”
“It’s not so much that. I think they would be dull.”
“They sound interesting enough in Hemingway.”
“Everything sounds interesting in Hemingway. It’s the way he writes.”
“Perhaps I’ll see one while I’m there. It would be interesting to find out, anyhow.”
“Do they have them in winter? Is there a season for them, or do they have them the year around?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it, to tell the truth.”
“How long will you stay there?”
“Until spring.”
“Will you go home then?”
“Yes. Back to Corinth. Have you been in Corinth?”
“Once. I don’t remember much about it.”
“There’s not much to remember. It’s not much of a place.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Well, it’s just a town. I was born there, and I’ve lived there all my life, and I expect I’ll die there. My mother is dead, and my father is dead, and I live alone in a brick house on High Street above the river that my family has lived in for four generations. I’ve thought about going away to live in some other house in some other town, but if I did I’d probably spend the rest of my life wishing I hadn’t and wanting to go back.”
“You could go back if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”
“Of course. And I would. So it’s much simpler not to go away at all. Except for a while at a time, like now. I’ll go to Mexico City and see Chapultepec Park again, and maybe a bullfight, and then I’ll go back. Some other time I’ll go some other place. And back. Always back.”
Their glasses were empty, so he signaled the waitress, and she came and took them away and brought them back full. He took a drink and looked at her and thought how cool her pale flesh looked and how her loveliness was something almost detached, something related in only the most incidental way to flesh and bone and the arrangement of features.
“I’ve been wondering something,” he said. “I’ve been wondering if you would care to come with me.”
“To Mexico City?”
“Yes. And then back to Corinth. I’ve been wondering if you would care to marry me.”
“I doubt that you want me to marry you, really.”
“I do, though. I’ve thought about it very carefully, and I’ve decided.”
“It’s a fine compliment. Thank you very much.”
“Does that mean you will do it?”
“If you’re sure it’s what you want.”
“I’m sure. I tell you I’m sure.”
“Perhaps, before we make it definite, I had better tell you something about myself.”
“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“But I want to. I want to tell you that I will make a very unsatisfactory wife. This is because I have no desire for you. If we are married, I will try to learn to desire you, but I doubt that I can ever learn. It is not only you, you understand. It is a deficiency in me in relation to all men.”
“You mean you are frigid?”
She considered the truth but could not tell it, and so she told the lie.
“Yes. I’m sorry. And now you can retract your proposal, and we will have some more drinks and forget all about it.”
He looked down into his glass, and she could see that his shoulders had begun to shake, and she thought with horror that he was crying, but then after a moment she saw that he was not crying but laughing, and this only increased her horror because the laughter contained this arid agony of hysteria and was far worse than the crying would have been. Without thinking, in her urgent need to stop him, she reached across the table and laid the fingers of one hand against the side of his face, and he looked up at once, the laughter dying in his throat.