Verne found a hammer and a screwdriver. He began to pull the nails out of the top of the box with the claw of the hammer. Presently the lid fell off. He stood it up against the wall in the corner of the room.
“There you are. Any other chores?”
“Already? My, but men are handy. You can go and lie down again, if you want.”
Verne put the hammer down and walked back to the bed. Barbara came over with an armload of clothes.
“Move. The dresser is full.”
“Move? Move where?”
“To the end of the bed. I have to put these somewhere until I get another dresser.”
Verne pulled himself over and she dropped the stack of dresses and skirts and slacks down beside him. “What a lot of stuff.” They seemed to make him uneasy. He did not know why. “Women always have so much junk. What are you going to use all these for?”
“What do you care?”
“Just curious. We’re only going to be here a week. You could have left most of them crated up.”
“Psychological reasons.” She shot him a quick glance. “That’s the way women are. All types of women.”
Verne grunted. “More?” She was bringing a second armload over to the bed. Verne moved nearer the end. “I can’t give you much more room. Not without getting off completely And I never do that.”
“There’s just a few more coming.” Barbara laid the remainder of her dresses with the others. Some suits slid gradually to one side until they were resting partly off the bed. “Push those back, Verne. Will you?”
“Sure.” He pushed the suits up again.
Barbara wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Her cheeks were red. She was perspiring, too. “That’s enough for one day. The rest can wait.” She sat down on the floor a little way from the bed. “God.”
Verne gazed down at her, in her dark slacks and red checkered shirt. On the back of her neck he could see drops of perspiration, at the narrow line between her collar and her brown hair. In the closeness of the room, steamy with moisture, he could sense the faint tinge of musk, the mist of human presence that was rising from the woman’s body, from her arms and shoulders and neck, just a few feet from him. A smell of sweet closeness mixed with the crisp smell of the checkered shirt.
“This is pleasant,” Verne murmured, stretching out on the bed as best he could. He leaned his head against the wall for a moment and then rolled over so that he lay resting on a stack of her clothes. He watched her idly, her back, her brown hair caught in place with a clasp, her bare arms. Her arms fascinated him. They were so full and rich. Golden. With the little hairs on them. Alive.
“Yes,” Barbara said.
“Yes? Yes what?”
“It’s pleasant.”
“Oh.”
She had not turned toward him. She was staring off into space. What was she thinking about? In the silence of the room he could hear her breathing. He could see her chest and shoulders rising and falling. He watched dully. It was still too far from him, too remote and lost in the past to be potent. Except, perhaps, the golden arms.
But even those did not really bring him out of his lethargy. This, what he saw before him, had been passed through already, far back and long ago. He did not go over the same motions again and again with a woman. There was only one time when a man could look at a given woman for the first, original time, newly, freshly, seeing her particular shoulders and back as different from all other shoulders and backs, her hair as softer and sweeter than all other hair. And that was four years behind him, with this woman.
She was attractive; there was no doubt of that. But it was not the same as seeing her as something that lay ahead of him. She lay in the past— the pun was unconscious, but he smiled at it—and that was a fact which could not be overlooked.
He thought of the week, perhaps more, they would be spending, the three of them, before the yuks came and they returned to the United States. One week, seven days at the very least, sitting and lying, frittering and fretting, picking at food, bored and restless, waiting, watching, cursing because the sun was too hot, the fog too gloomy and cold. Like a man in a shower bath, spinning the knobs first one way, then another. Never satisfied.
Right now, the hot was turned too far up. But night time it would be the other way around. But either way, they were not going to like it. Carl, perhaps. But not either of them. What Carl did and thought was another matter. But Carl was not being considered. For them, for himself and for Barbara, things were not going to be right, not until they had got away, gone each along his own particular path, by himself. As long as they were together there was going to be friction. It was a question of how much. And the heat didn’t help.
“Maybe I should open the door,” Barbara said, all at once.
Verne started. It was uncanny, the way her thoughts paralleled his! He didn’t like it. They had come too close in their life-views, their Weltanschauungs, much too close for comfort Once, they had been far apart But now they were thinking much along the same lines.
“Why the door?” Verne asked.
“Air comes in from the hall.” She got to her feet and opened the door. Air came in, but it was warm and dry, no better than what they already had. It smelled of people coming from the bathroom, coming and going, endless times.
“Fine,” Verne muttered. “Just right.”
“Anyhow, it’s not so stuffy. There’s a current going out the window, through the room.”
But Verne was not happy. He was restless and uncomfortable. He stirred fretfully. His skin felt prickly, a revolting sensation, damp, prickly skin.
“Is there a shower in this building? There must be.”
“Just tubs.”
Sadness and angry despair settled over Verne. His face darkened; his whole body seemed to curl up into a scowl. Barbara watched curiously, her arms folded.
“What’s wrong?”
“No shower.”
Barbara continued to study him, her face showing no emotion. “Here,” she said suddenly. “I’ll take pity on you.” She picked up her suitcase from the floor and put it on the bed. She unsnapped it and brought out a bottie, carefully wrapped in a towel. Verne watched with interest as she removed the towel.
“I know that stuff,” he said, and the prickling and restlessness went away from him. “That’s the old doc’s magic snake oil, all right.”
“It sure is. And it’s the last I have.”
She took a plastic cup and went down the hall to the bathroom to fill it. She brought it back, carrying it carefully.
“Is it cold?” Verne asked.
“I let the tap run. It’s cool, I think.” She mixed whiskey into the cup, stirring it with the screwdriver. “I can’t find the spoon.”
“That’s all right. I’ve stirred it with a lot of different things, and it always tastes the same afterwards.”
“You first,” Barbara said.
He took the cup and drank deeply. It was good, warm though it was. Good? It did not taste good. No use to pretend that. He did not drink it because of its taste. He drank it for other reasons. He drank it because of the way it made him feel. And he was too old to spend time analyzing that any more.
He handed the cup back, smacking his lips.
“You didn’t leave much,” Barbara said, sipping at what was left. “It doesn’t matter. After all, you deserved something for all the work you did.”
“I consider myself repaid in full.”
The two of them sat for a while without speaking, Verne stretched out on the bed as best he could, Barbara sitting on the floor again, sipping at the cup.
It still seemed odd to Verne, but not as odd as it had. He was beginning to become used to seeing her again; it was regaining its naturalness. Now the other part, the four years of not seeing her, was starting to fade and seem unreal. The sight of the woman, sitting on the floor in her red shirt and dark slacks, was becoming an accepted event, almost partaking of the familiar. Like a habit which had been forgotten, it was all sweeping back on his again, after only a short reacquaintance; the groove was there, and it needed only to be filled.