“He likes you and worries about you. I can tell. He dislikes me, but he likes you very much.”
“Don’t let Yancy fool you. It’s just a professional attitude.”
“No. It’s true. He said you don’t eat right or sleep right or do anything right that you can do wrong.”
“All right, all right. Never mind Yancy. What are you doing here?”
“That’s surely obvious. I’ve come to see you.”
“Visiting the sick?”
“As it turns out, I am, but I’d have come to see you anyhow.”
“What do you want?”
“First of all, I want to come in. Don’t you know it’s very rude to keep someone standing so long outside your door?”
“I don’t think you’d better.”
“Come in?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I just think it would be better if you didn’t.”
“Will you kindly tell me what’s wrong with me? Everywhere I go, everyone wants me to go away again.”
“I didn’t say I want you to. I said it would be better if you did.”
“Oh. I see that I misunderstood. Well, now that you’ve explained it, I’d still be happy to come in, if you’d only ask me.”
“All right. Come in.”
He stepped aside, and she walked past him into the room with a warm feeling of familiarity with it and all its contents, and this was pleasant and rather unusual, for often when she walked into most rooms, even rooms she’d been in many times or even lived in, she had a feeling of being a stranger who had never been there before. Turning, she looked at Joe Doyle, and the light was now fully on his face, which had not been so when he was standing in the doorway, and she saw that he did look sick, exhausted, the flesh drawn in his face and making him appear not so much an older man as a young man who looked older than he ought to look.
“You need someone to take care of you,” she said.
“Look,” he said, “I appreciate your concern and all that, but you’re giving too much credence to Yancy’s talk.”
“Its not that. It’s the way you look. It makes me want to cry. Do you know that it’s been a very long time since I’ve wanted to cry?”
“I’m all right. All I need is a little rest.”
But he was not all right, and he needed far more than a little rest. What he needed was something that neither she nor anyone else could ever give him. Turning she crossed to a worn sofa and sat down at one end, right against the arm, and looked gravely at a bright framed splash of hot color that might have been a copy of a Gauguin.
“What was it you were playing on the phonograph?” she said. “You remember. Over and over when I was here before.”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I want you to play it again.”
“I’d play it if I could remember. Maybe you could hum a little of it.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
She hummed a little, softly and off-key, still looking at what was probably a Gauguin copy, and he listened, watching her and smiling and wanting suddenly to laugh.
“That’s enough,” he said. “See if this is it.”
He went to the phonograph and put on a record and started it spinning. After the first few bars of music, she nodded and looked from the Gauguin copy to him.
“That’s it,” she said, “Now come and lie down and put your head in my lap. Please do.”
She had about her the compelling quality of an earnest child. It would have been no more than perversity, he thought, to refuse what she asked. He lay down on his back on the sofa with his head in her lap, and she began to rub his forehead lightly with the tips of her fingers, and. she felt then, for a few minutes, closer than she had felt in a decade to the girl in the vision of the street and the father, closer than she would ever feel again.
“Are you happy that I’ve come back?” she said.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“It’s quite remarkable that I have. Usually I never want to be with a man a second time.”
“Why with me?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t believe it’s wise to try to diagnose something like that, as if it were a case of something. I only knew I wanted to be with you a second time, and I know now that I’ll want to be with you a third time, and every time I’m with you from now on I’ll be thinking about being with you next time.”
“You think so?”
“It’s true. You’ll see.”
“You have a husband. Have you forgotten? Husbands complicate matters.”
“How do you know I have a husband? I don’t recall mentioning him.”
“You didn’t. Maybe it’s just because your not having one would be better luck than I’m likely to have.”
“Well, you mustn’t let it make you feel bad. I’ll simply have to arrange things.”
“Is it so simple?”
“Not actually. Sometimes it may be quite difficult, but I’m prepared to do it. I’m quite clever when I need to be. You’ll see.”
“All right. I’ll believe it for the present.”
“That’s fair. It’s only necessary to believe it each time for as long as the time lasts. Now it’s this time, and we believe it, and it’s all right. Everything’s all right.”
“How about between times? Between times I probably won’t believe it at all.”
“You’ll have to try. After a while you’ll begin to believe it even between times. Tell me. Were you angry when you woke up and found me gone?”
“No.”
“Why not? You’d have been justified. It was really rather rude of me to go away without a word.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh, now. Of course you were asleep. I looked at you carefully several times. I even counted your ribs.”
“I was awake. Even before you got up.”
“If you were awake, tell me what I did.”
“When I first saw you, you seemed to be pointing toward Mecca.”
“What?”
“You know. The way Mohammedans pray. On their knees and bending way over.”
“Oh. Is that when you wakened? I must have looked perfectly ludicrous.”
“No. Curiously charming. What were you really doing, by the way? I’ve been wondering.”
“I was trying to read the time on your wrist watch.”
He began to laugh softly, and she continued to rub his forehead and waited for him to stop.
“Is it so funny?” she said.
“Yes.”
“But charming?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good, then. Do you know what I’d like to know?”
“No.”
“I’d like to know all about you as a boy. Where you lived and what you did and all about everything.”
“I was a very dull boy. It was dull where I lived.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Take my word for it. I’d rather talk about you.”
“Oh, no. I don’t even like to think about me, let alone talk. It’s too depressing.”
“Tell me about your husband.”
“That would be even more depressing.”
“Is he rich?”
“Yes. He’s very rich.”
“Is that why you married him?”
“That’s one reason.”
“What others?”
“Nothing important. It was a kind of convenience. It solved a few problems for some people.”
“Including you?”
“Well, it’s very nice to have lots of money. I don’t think I’d care to live without lots of money.”
“I see your point of view. Not having lots of money is a problem that’s worth solving, even by marriage.”
She sat quietly, stroking his forehead and looking from his face to the Gauguin copy and back again, listening to the music with a feeling that was like the one she used to have when she listened as a girl in summer evenings to the music of countless cicadas.
“I’m sorry that I won’t be able to stay all night,” she said.