While thinking of Samantha, she had been drawing deeply and methodically on her cigarette without realizing what she was doing, and suddenly she became aware that her tongue was hot and the cigarette was tipped with a long red coal that was almost half as long as what was left of the cigarette itself. She crushed it in a tray and drank the coffee in her cup. She was beginning now to wish that she hadn’t eaten such a hearty breakfast. It had tasted good, and she had enjoyed it, even the egg, but it was beginning to feel like a mass of sodden facial tissue in her stomach, and she couldn’t imagine how it had got as far as it had, or how it would ever get the rest of the way it had to go.
Well, it served her right for being such a glutton. Ordinarily she had very little taste for food of any kind, and she ate lightly as a necessity whenever her body demanded it, and she simply couldn’t understand people who made a big issue of eating, a kind of religious ceremony, with all kinds of specifications as to how things were to be prepared and served. It was disgusting, when you stopped to think about it, making such a thing over eating flesh and eggs and things like that, a lot more disgusting than some of the natural appetites some people professed to find disgusting, and anyone who did it, as she had just done it, deserved to have an uncomfortable stomach at least.
Getting up abruptly from the table, she went out of the dining room and into a hall and down the hall to a library with two or three thousand books that no one ever read. Once she had gone through a period of resolving to be something different from what she was, and then she had decided to start reading the books in the library with the intention of becoming dedicated to a reclusive life, and she had actually taken a few of them down and read snatches in them here and there, but she had never got around to starting one at the beginning and reading through to the end. It was just as well that she hadn’t started, anyhow, because the period had been pretty brief, and she probably wouldn’t have had time in the length of it to read a whole book. Now, starting Monday morning to wait for Tuesday night, she put several records on the hi-fi and sat down in a chair to listen.
Not that she really listened. Not, that is, with an understanding of scores and a genuine appreciation of execution. The music simply became a part of her emotional content and gave a kind of splendid quality to things remembered and anticipated that had not really been splendid at all, or would not be. Eventually, this effect became flattened, and she became bored. She wondered what she could possibly do with the rest of the day without going out somewhere to do it. There was nothing she could do with it, she decided. Nothing in the apartment. She had determined as a matter of sagacity to stay home until tomorrow night, but it would surely do no harm to go shopping, which was something she had not done for quite a long time, and so she went to her room with a freshly made bed and dressed appropriately and went.
There was nothing she needed or especially wanted, but then she thought that she would buy a new gown to wear tomorrow night for Joe Doyle, and this became at once a rather exciting venture. She tried to decide what he would probably like in the way of a gown, and she realized that she didn’t have the least idea. It was astonishing. They had actually known each other intimately for a long while, almost a week, and she did not know about him such a simple thing as what he might like in the way of a gown. Perhaps this was significant, and it bothered her slightly for a moment because she thought it might indicate a deficiency or basic indifference in their relationship. But this was not true, she assured herself, and what it really indicated was a kind of stripped and unqualified acceptance of each by the other. What she would have to get was something that she especially liked herself, and the chances were, since they were so compatible and acceptable to each other in all ways, that Joe would like it too.
She went to a salon and looked at some original gowns on two sleek models, and by a stroke of uncommon luck the third one on the first model was a gown that she knew immediately was exactly right and that she must certainly have. It was simply designed and seemed to be precariously secured, which added a quality of anticipation to its effect on whoever was watching whoever was almost in it, and it was a gown, most importantly, which clearly required other prerequisites than merely the considerable sum of money it took to buy it. After paying for the gown and arranging to have it sent, she went to two other places and bought lingerie in one and shoes in the other, which she also arranged to have sent, and then it was definitely late enough to have the Martini she had been thinking about, between other thoughts, all afternoon.
In the cocktail lounge that happened to be nearest to where she bought the shoes, she sat at a small round table in cool shadows and drank one Martini quickly and another slowly. While slowly drinking the second one, she began to think deliberately about something she had been deliberately not thinking about, or at least trying not to think about and this was what Oliver might know about the weekend, and what he might say or do about it when she saw him this evening for the first time since returning last night. She didn’t see how Oliver could possibly know anything, unless Samantha had given it away, damn her, but Samantha couldn’t have given away anything specific, at least, because she only knew that Charity had used the house, not with whom or why, although she could surely guess the latter. If it turned out that he knew about Joe’s being there, or about Long Island or the night before Long Island, then that would be additional evidence of an abnormal capacity to learn things, or of some method of systematic spying, and she didn’t know which of these would be worse, but either would be too bad. They were both threatening and frightening, and that was why she had deliberately not thought of them, and she would not have thought of them now if she had not been compelled by the time and supported by gin.
Having considered the issue at last, whether Oliver would know anything or not, she felt a strong compulsion to find out as quickly as possible, and for that reason she wanted to be home when he arrived at six, which it would be in less than an hour according to the tiny watch on her wrist. Resisting the desire to have a third Martini, she left the lounge and returned to the apartment and went directly to her room. After she had changed into something more casual and comfortable, there were only ten minutes left of the time before Oliver would return on schedule to dress and do whatever else he regularly did before going out again this particular night of the week for dinner and bridge at his club. Or was it Tuesday night that he went for dinner and bridge? She was uncertain about it, but it didn’t matter, anyhow, for she definitely remembered that he went somewhere for something this night.
She had intended waiting here in her room, but in considering his coming and what might happen, she remembered what had happened the other time, the time about a week ago right after he had told her all about her first experience with Joe, and so she decided suddenly to wait instead in the living room, where the same thing might still happen again but was less likely. Going into the living room, she sat on a sofa and looked at pictures in a magazine and spent the remaining minutes, and when Oliver arrived at six she was vastly relieved to see that he was quite normal and apparently not suspicious or angry about anything.
“Hello, my dear,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Do I look as if I were not?”
“On the contrary Your weekend in the country seems to have agreed with you. Perhaps we should have a place of our own. Not in Fairfield County, however. I think I’d prefer Bucks.”
“Well, I’d not prefer either one as a regular thing. As a regular thing, I prefer the city. We’d only want to go to the country now and then, and it would hardly be worthwhile having a place for no more than that. It’s always possible to get invited to someone’s house when you want to go.”