“You look beautiful, swee’heart.”
“I’ll bet. Mirror, mirror, on the wall...” his father said, and then his voice drifted.
David leaned over the bed. He kissed his father on the forehead. His flesh was hot and damp.
“Good night, Pop,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well, okay?”
His father nodded and closed his eyes.
It suddenly occurred to David that he might never see him alive again.
He called home at seven-thirty and got the answering machine. Molly’s cool voice: I’m sorry, we can’t come to the phone just now. Will you leave a message when you hear the beep? He left word that he was going down to dinner and asked that she call him later tonight. He debated whether or not he would need a jacket for dinner, decided against it, and left the room. The fifteenth-floor corridor was empty. He rang for the elevator and waited. He could hear it whining down the shaft. The doors opened.
The British girl was standing against the far wall. Tonight, she was wearing white slacks, high-heeled sandals, and a shrieking-red blouse. Her blond hair was loose. He stepped into the elevator.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening,” she answered.
The elevator doors closed.
They rode in silence for a moment.
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she said, “Wasn’t that comical last night?”
“The empty dining room, do you mean?”
“Last Year at Marienbad,” she said, nodding.
Her voice was soft, well modulated, very English. She was wearing an Elsa Peretti heart on a gold chain around her neck. I almost bought you a heart at Tiffany’s, he thought. There were freckles across the bridge of her nose. She had taken a bit too much sun today. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were almost as bright as the blouse she wore. Her eyes, he noticed, were intensely green.
“I felt as if the Russians had dropped The Bomb,” she said, smiling, “and no one had bothered to tell us. We were the last two people on earth, but we hadn’t been informed.”
The elevator doors opened.
“Is this the lobby already?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes,” he said, and held his hand over the electric eye while she walked past him. He detected the faintest scent of mimosa.
“Well, good night,” she called over her shoulder.
“Good night,” he said.
At the front desk, he handed the clerk his key and then asked if there was a good restaurant close by. He did not want to eat in the hotel dining room again. The clerk told him there was a French restaurant on Collins Avenue, just a few blocks north, but he had never eaten there.
“Have you tried our restaurant, sir? They serve a nice veal parmesan.”
David thanked him and went out into the street.
The air was hot and humid; it smelled of fetid things rotting in the sun. The stretch of Collins Avenue along which he walked was lined with souvenir shops, lingerie shops, stores selling bathing suits and inflatable rubber rafts. He remembered floating inside his inner tube, the vast blue sky overhead. “Watch out for horseshoe crabs,” his Uncle Max used to say. He would have to call his Uncle Max. After the operation tomorrow, he thought. An Englishman wearing a white T-shirt and wrinkled blue shorts, brown walking shoes and white socks, strolled past, savoring Miami Beach. David guessed he was an Englishman. His wife wore wrinkled yellow shorts and a purple tube top. Their pudding-faced children were eating chocolate ice cream cones. He caught a cockney accent. Lower-class Englishmen sitting on jackasses to have their photos taken. He wondered how accurate the description of Clovelly had been. He and Molly had never made it to Covelly, only one of the many places they never seemed to have made it to. How does it go by so fast? he wondered.
The restaurant was small and empty.
He took a table near a fish tank with three tropical fish in it. He watched the fish. In the kitchen, a radio was going. Frank Sinatra. He did not recognize the tune. A waiter came to the table.
“Would you care to see a menu, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, but first I’d like a drink. Canadian and soda, please,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have a liquor license,” the waiter said.
“Oh,” David said.
“Only wine and beer, sir.”
He debated leaving. He wanted a drink very badly. He had been wanting a drink ever since Kaplan told him they would be doing the operation tomorrow morning.
“Well, let me have a... do you have any Beaujolais?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A bottle of Beaujolais then. A half-bottle, if you have it.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have Beaujolais in the half-bottle.”
“What do you have in the half-bottle?”
“Nothing, sir. We have only the full bottles, or you can order by the glass.”
“Let me have a full bottle then.”
“Yes, sir, a bottle of Beaujolais.”
“And I’ll look at the menu, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
The waiter came back a few moments later. David was watching the fish in the tank.
“Shall I open it now, sir? Let it breathe a little?”
“Please,” David said. He didn’t know you had to let Beaujolais breathe.
The waiter showed David the label on the bottle. David nodded. The waiter uncorked the bottle and poured wine into David’s glass. He handed David a menu.
The special tonight is seafood marinière,” he said. That’s catch of the day with shrimp and lobster, sautéed in a tomato sauce with garlic and shallots.”
“What’s the catch of the day?” David asked.
“Red snapper.”
“Well, give me a minute to look this over.”
“Take all the time you need, sir,” the waiter said, and walked off.
David lifted the wineglass to his lips. He sipped at the wine. He raised his eyebrows. Nice, he thought. Not much body, but amusing nonetheless. And a trifle foxy. He smiled. They used to make a game of imitating wine mavens, he and Molly.
They walked, he and Molly, off the boardwalk and out into the side street where her hotel nested in a warren of similarly gray-shingled buildings. The storm clouds had blown far out to sea. The leaves were wet and brilliantly green after the storm. The streets were wet, too; they glistened and steamed in the sunshine. Everything smelled of summer. Her stride matched his. Long legs. High-heeled sandals clicking on the rain-washed pavement.
Her name was not Regan with an a, she told him, but Re gen with an e. A harried Ellis Island customs official had mistaken the name of her grandparents’ town for their surname and had then summarily shortened it to something that sounded more “American.” Her grandparents had come from Regensburg, in the southern part of Germany, not far from Nuremberg. His shiksa was a Jewish-American Princess.
She took off her sandals and walked barefoot in the puddles alongside the curb. He put his arm around her waist. He could feel the heat of her body through the thin summer dress. She sidled away from him. His heart was beating so fast he thought he would collapse right there on the street. There were two old ladies in house-dresses sitting on the rickety porch of her hotel, rocking, looking out at the sunshine, rocking.
“Will I see you again?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Tonight?”
“No, Tm busy tonight.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, I have to get dressed. He’s picking me up at six.”
“Early date,” he said.
“Well, what business is that of yours?” she said.