I couldn’t look at her, “Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said simply.
“There must have been some reason.”
“I thought maybe you needed help. Maybe you didn’t have enough money left to pay it yourself. And I owed it to you.”
“Yes, you owe me a lot,” I said. “You’re deeply indebted to me.”
“It cost you a lot of money, buying these clothes for me, and you were awful nice to me sometimes.”
I knew I couldn’t take much more of it, and I knew too that she wasn’t doing it intentionally. She really meant it. I had hurt her terribly, but still that streak of bitter and uncompromising honesty of hers wouldn’t let her forget that I had—just for a few moments, anyway—done something she regarded as nice.
“You didn’t want me to see you there outside the jail, did you?”_
She waited a long time before she answered. “I don’t know, Bob. It’s all kind of mixed up. I wanted to see you again and maybe even be with you, but still I didn’t. There’s something sort of wonderful about being with you when you act like you like me, but you can turn so mean without any warning and you can be so awful hard. I don’t know why the things you say hurt so much.”
I stopped there on the corner and took hold of both her arms and turned her around facing me. We were standing in front of a billboard on a vacant lot in the hot sun, with cars going past us in the street, but it didn’t make any difference. I had to tell her.
“I promised you once I wouldn’t ever be mean to you again, didn’t I? And I broke it the next day. So I won’t promise again, but I’ll try to tell you what happened there by the river. I don’t know how I can tell you, because I don’t think I know myself. The only thing I can think of is that it was jealousy. It hit me so suddenly I didn’t have time to think.”
“Why? I mean, I don’t understand why you would be jealous.”
“Because of Lee and all that other business. The car. You know what I mean. I’m not trying to hurt you now, Angelina; I’m just trying to explain to you.”
“But why did it make any difference to you? It didn’t before.”
“That was before. And a long time ago.”
“Not so very. Nothing has been a long time ago with us. It’s only been three days.” She was looking down, tracing a design on the pavement with the toe of her shoe, and I noticed how scuffed and dirty it was. White shoes weren’t for hitchhiking.
“Just three days. But I didn’t love you then. I do now.”
She thought it over quietly for a minute before she answered. “It’s that way with me too, Bob.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. That’s the reason I came down here. I thought I might see you again. It was just a chance that you might decide to come on down here instead of going somewhere else.”
“You don’t hate me for what I said? And did?”
“No. Not now. I think I finally figured it out for myself and guessed what was the matter. I wouldn’t have followed you except for that. But you won’t do it again, will you, Bob? I couldn’t stand it again.”
“No. That’s all finished,” I said.
I kept it from her, all right, this fear I had, but I couldn’t fool myself any about it. Was there any way of being sure it wouldn’t happen again? How could there be?
Eighteen
The desk clerk regarded me suspiciously when I registered again with Angelina and wanted to be moved into a double room. The combination of my whiskery, cut-up face with its evidence of a two-day binge and a wife who showed up unexpectedly with no luggage was obviously a little strong to take straight, but he managed it and moved us into a room overlooking the beach.
When the boy had gone I picked her up and walked over and sat down with her in the armchair by the window. We were silent for a long time and just sat there holding onto each other and listening to the swish of the surf beyond the sea wall.
“You’ll hold me a lot, won’t you?” she asked at last. “Like this. So I’ll forget about last night and the night before that.”
“Were they bad?”
“Awful. I kept trying not to think about not seeing you any more. But you can’t make yourself not think, can you?”
“No,” I said. “You can’t turn it off.”
“Did you miss me, Bob?”
“Yes.”
“Very bad?”
“Very bad. And on top of that was the way I’d hurt you. That was something to live with.”
“Don’t think about it now.”
She leaned back against my arm and ran her fingers lightly over the bruises and cut places on my face. “Poor face. Poor old sweet face, it’s all hurt.”
“It’s not hurt.”
“You tell me who did it and I’ll go scratch his eyes out.”
“Let’s forget about my face and talk about something nicer. Yours, for instance.”
“No. I will not forget about it. It’s a beautiful face and I love it. And I want to fix up the cut places.”
I lost interest in my face as a topic of conversation in a very short while, so I kissed her.
That changed the subject for both of us, all right. I wondered why kissing her could always cloud up the issue in a way that whisky never could. The jagged edges of facts and the sharp corners of realities became blurred and softened and all the noises muted.
“I love you so,” I said.
“What is it like with you, Bob? Do things seem to sort of run together? Is it like flying through colored clouds?”
“Right now it’s like having a high fever and being full of quinine. Everything’s fuzzy and my ears hum.”
“It doesn’t sound very nice for you. Maybe what you need is a doctor.”
“All right,” I said. “Call a doctor.”
“No. But I want it to be nicer for you. I want you to see the colors. Big clouds of colors swinging around and passing through each other. I don’t think men have any fun being in love. Don’t you see any colors?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Even with your eyes closed?”
“I didn’t close them. I don’t think I did.”
“Kiss me again, with your eyes closed.”
I kissed her again and I think I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t any different. There was the wildness of it and a paradoxical tenderness and a feeling of suffocation, but it was just the same.
“Did you see them?”
I shook my head.
“Poor men. They don’t have any fun. No colors.”
“I see the ones that are you. Like your hair. It’s a beautiful color. It’s just a little lighter than wild honey.”
“That’s nice, but it isn’t the same thing. You don’t just see these colors. You feel them.”
“I can see your hair and feel it, too. Against my face.”
“I want you to. I’m going to have it bobbed tomorrow and you’ll like it even better.”
“No, I won’t. It couldn’t be any better. And let’s not talk about tomorrow. We’re in no condition for long-range planning.”
“We’re not?”
“No. Planning requires great clarity of thought.”
“I don’t want any what-you-said of thought. I just want you to kiss me.”
“That’s better,” I said. “More kissing; less planning.”
“You can’t plan when you’re kissing me?”
“Not objectively.”
“Why not?”
“How could I kiss you and do anything objectively?”
“We won’t plan about the hair then? Not now?” she murmured.