“Oh, must we?” she said. “It’s such a lovely night.” She blew out a stream of smoke and said, “Thank you, Ralph.”
“I’ve got work to do tomorrow,” David said.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Tell that to Norman.”
“May I just finish this last cigarette?”
“I’d really rather go, Molly. It’s almost two o’clock.”
“Is it that late already?” she said, and rose immediately, and immediately snuffed out the cigarette. “It was nice talking to you,” she said to Lonigan. “We’ll have to continue our conversation sometime.”
“Soon, I hope,” Lonigan said, and rose, and took her hand, and said, “Good night, Molly, it was a pleasure.”
“Good night,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”
Their handclasp lingered.
“Well, good night,” Lonigan said at last.
“Good night,” she said again — a trifle breathlessly, David thought. He was suddenly furious.
He led her off the terrace and over the small bridge and into the courtyard and held open the passenger-side door of the Fiat for her, and then slammed it when she was inside the car, and came around to the driver’s side, and opened the door there, and climbed in behind the wheel, and slammed that door, too.
“My, aren’t we noisy tonight,” she said.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“What was what all about?”
“The tender love scene up there.”
“What tender love scene?”
“Why were you encouraging that jackass?”
“He’s not a jackass.”
“Why were you encouraging him?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then what was that big operatic farewell? ‘We’ll have to continue our conversation sometime,’ ” he mimicked. “What the hell was that?”
“It was saying good night to someone who seemed to take a sincere interest in me.”
David stepped on the accelerator and went screeching out of the gravel driveway to the main road. At the stop sign he turned right without braking and began the drive to the villa, speeding around the curves, scarcely taking his foot off the gas pedal.
“Try not to get us killed, okay?” Molly said.
“I didn’t realize until tonight,” David said tightly, “that you were quite so susceptible to flattery.”
“Please watch the road,” she said.
“The man was sitting not three feet from where I could hear every word he was saying...”
“You shouldn’t have been listening.”
“But that didn’t stop him from making the most blatant overtures, which you encouraged...”
“I did nothing of the kind.”
“...when you must have known he was trying to get in your pants!”
“Yes, I’m sure everyone in the world is just dying to get in my pants.”
“Molly, he was coming on with you, and you know it!”
“I didn’t detect it.”
“No? ‘God, that mouth!’ ” he mimicked. “ ‘What I could do with that mouth.’ ”
“On film,” Molly said.
“I’m glad you remember every word he said.”
“I found him interesting.”
“You must have,” David said tightly. “Giggling and cooing and batting your lashes and holding hands and generally behaving like a cheap middle-aged cunt!”
Molly blinked at him. Wordlessly, she opened the door on her side of the car, stepped out into the road, slammed the door behind her, and began walking back in the direction of the hotel.
“Do you want some more of this, Pop?” he asked.
His father nodded.
“I’ll try to find another small piece for you, okay? The smaller pieces are easier for you, aren’t they?”
Another nod. The bewildered look. The goddamn persistent bewildered look.
She did not return to the villa until four in the morning. He looked at the bedside clock when he heard the front door opening and closing, and then he rolled over on his side and pretended he was asleep. She did not put on a light. She undressed in the dark and then got into bed. He imagined he smelled the aftermusk of intercourse on her. She fell asleep almost at once. He lay awake for the next hour, and finally fell asleep himself.
He awakened shortly after nine to the persistent purring of a turtledove in the garden. He made his own breakfast — this was Sunday and the help’s day off — and lingered over it, hoping Molly would wake up and join him. His anger was gone now. But more than that, he recognized the cause of it. All Jews are guilt-ridden, Molly was fond of saying. This time, she was right. Would he have flared up at her so violently if he hadn’t felt guilty over his own flirtation with that goddamn nubile translator in the come-hither blouse? Not to mention — but that was another story.
No, he thought, that’s the same story. The same old story for the past four years.
He went to the stove, took the kettle from it, and poured himself another cup of coffee. He sat at the table and listened. The house was silent. Molly was still sound asleep. Was it possible she had really gone to bed with Lonigan last night? This innocent middle-aged housewife, Your Honor? I’ll be forty-jive in September. Can any of you possibly imagine this honest, forebearing, loving wife and bereaved mother breaking the sacred vows of a marriage that had endured since 1959? Almost twenty-two years, ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Would this admittedly still beautiful woman endanger such a lasting union? Sure, David thought. Why not? And who could blame her? Well, come on, he thought, get off it, will you? What’s done is done.
And what had they been, after all, those minor excursions of his? A black court stenographer whose skirt kept riding up recklessly over her knees as she worked her Steno-tab machine and flirted wildly with her eyes. Twenty-seven years old. It had lasted for two months. A woman attorney in Philadelphia, where he’d gone to settle a claim made against one of his clients by a daughter who’d moved there from New York. The lawyer had been a redhead. She kept calling him “Counselor” in bed. Come fuck me again, Counselor. Shades of Molly Regen before the accident. Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror that night in Philadelphia, mildly drunk on the bottle of champagne he had shared with his learned adversary, he had said out loud, “You’re a damn fool, Counselor.” Perhaps he was. The half-dozen other women over the past four years since Stephen’s death. Well, perhaps a dozen. Perhaps more. Who the hell was counting? What really counted was that he was still doing it, never mind what’s done is done. If the Italian translator had given him the slightest sign of encouragement, he’d have laid her on the spot while the Italian lawyers protested the favored-nations clause.
Everything used to be so perfect, he thought. Why did it have to change? Why us?
He finished his breakfast and went into the room where his papers were spread out on the long table. Molly did not get up until almost eleven. She went directly into the bathroom, where he heard her showering, and then into the kitchen, where he heard her padding around barefooted. In a little while, she appeared on the beach below the window where he was working. She took off her bikini top and stretched out languidly on a towel, her face turned toward the sun, her arms at her sides, palms upward. A white speedboat came churning in over the water. The pilot cut the engine, threw an anchor over the side, and then stepped over the gunnels into shallow water, his red hair glowing in the sun. Lonigan.