“I almost told Rickie last Wednesday,” she says.
“Told him what?”
“All of it.”
And now young Ricardo Alvaredo Diaz boldly takes the stage, suddenly stepping out to tumultuous applause, grinning at the audience and flexing his muscles, the feathers rippling on the tattooed Indian’s headdress as Kate steers the car off the drive and onto East Ninety-sixth Street.
“Where were you, David?” she asks, turning sharply from the wheel. “Where the hell were you last Wednesday? Doing it to Julia up there on the Vineyard? When you should have been doing it to me?”
How did this get to be this? he wonders.
All I wanted to do was kiss you.
And who the hell is Julia?
“If you’d been here,” she says, “I wouldn’t have let him,” and suddenly yanks the car over to the curb and throws her arms on the steering wheel, and lowers her head onto them, and begins sobbing uncontrollably.
It is now almost ten A.M. Across the room, Kate is on the couch, the little girl on the Les Miz poster staring sorrowfully into the room from the wall behind her. She has stopped crying. She has taken off the black raincoat and the yellow rain boots, and she is sitting cross-legged in jeans, a white cotton T-shirt, and white socks, the man’s gray fedora still pulled down over her hair. It occurs to him that she covered her hair so that it wouldn’t signal blatantly to the man stalking her. But they are now in her apartment, where she is safe, so why is she still wearing the dumb hat?
He is inordinately, and unprofessionally, angry with her. He is supposed to be a psychiatrist, trained and caring and concerned, but instead he is reacting like a jealous schoolboy. After all she told him in the car, and knowing now the very real trouble this son of a bitch letter-writer has been causing, all he can think of is that last Wednesday she let that kid from the bike shop... the very word infuriates him. Let him. Like kids on a goddamn rooftop. Will you let me, Katie? Sure, Rickie, just let me take off my panties, dear. The Miss Saigon helicopter is waiting to take him out of here, perhaps back to the Vineyard. The cats in the apartment — the real one nuzzling his leg, and the yellow-eyed one in the poster above the sofa, and the green-eyed one sitting on the sofa opposite him, still wearing the goddamn hat — are all waiting for his next move. He’s thinking if she doesn’t give him the right answers, he just might...
The problem is he wants to hold her.
Touch her.
Kiss her.
The problem is he has missed her desperately.
“All right,” he says, “tell me what happened last Wednesday.”
“I don’t wish to discuss it further,” she says.
Then go to hell, he thinks.
“Then why’d you bring it up?” he says.
“Because I wanted to get it out in the open.”
“It’s not in the open yet. Not until I know what happened.”
“What do you think happened?” she asks.
“Just tell me, okay? Was Gloria here, too?”
“No. How’d Gloria get into this?”
“How’d Rickie get into it, is what I want to know.”
“Then why’d you mention Gloria? Can’t you wait to get at her again?”
“Look, Kate, don’t try to shift the goddamn guilt here...”
“I’m not trying to shift any guilt. I don’t feel any guilt.”
“Then why were you bawling in the car?”
“Not because I was feeling guilt. Don’t give me guilt, okay? I had enough guilt with Jacqueline. I’ve been through guilt and back again, David, okay? I’m fine now, okay, so don’t...”
“Why’d you go to bed with him?”
“Go to bed with him? Are you dreaming?”
“You said...”
“I said...”
“You said if I’d been here, you wouldn’t have let him.”
“That’s right.”
“Let him what?”
“Kiss me, for Christ’s sake! Anyway, are you so celibate up there on the Vineyard?”
“You know I’m married.”
“Yes, and you know I’m single.”
“What is that supposed to be? A license to kill?”
“Nobody killed anybody, David.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that.”
“Anyway, we’ve been through this before.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I told you he’d asked me out.”
“You also told me you didn’t give him your number.”
“I didn’t. Not then. I went to see him right after the letter was delivered here. That’s when I gave him my number. He was helping me, David. Anyway, we’re not married, you know.”
“So I’m beginning to understand.”
“You make love to her, you know. So you can’t...”
“That’s something altogether...”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So you have no right...”
“That’s right, I don’t. So I guess if there’s nothing further to discuss, I’ll just...”
“We’re having another fight, you know. About Rickie again.”
“With a difference this time.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Last time, you hadn’t kissed him.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s the cliché of all time. If it didn’t mean anything...”
“It didn’t.”
“Then why the hell did you do it?”
“To thank him.”
“For what?”
“For helping me. For being here! Where the hell were you, David?”
“Look, what’s the sense of this?”
“None. Not if you want to keep on fighting.”
But she seems delighted that they are fighting. He senses the argument adds a dimension of domesticity to their tottering romance, perhaps provides it with the promise of longevity as well. After all, if they’re having their second fight, and if they survive it, the implication is there’ll be a third fight and a fourth and a fifth ad infinitum. Just like Mum and Dad, kiddies. Having their cute little fight, so they can kiss and make up afterward. Except that he has no intention of kissing her now, not after she kissed her young toreador last Wednesday night. And God knows how many times since.
“Have you seen him since?” he asks.
“No.”
“Has he called you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bet. Give them a taste of honey...”
“Stop it, David! I’m not a whore!”
“Who said you were?”
“I’m not a whore!”
He has not even mentioned this word, and he wonders where it comes from now. A whore? Simply because she kissed...
“What kind of kiss?”
“What do you mean?”
“A friendly kiss, a brotherly kiss, a paternal...”
“A goddamn soul kiss!” she says angrily.
The room goes silent.
“I thought you loved me,” he says.
“I do.”
“In your fashion.”
“No. Completely and utterly.”
He looks at her.
He wishes he could believe her, but then why the Wednesday night Latino? Besides, she’s correct in maintaining there are no strings on her, mister, she is as free as a bird and entitled to kiss whomever the hell she chooses. The thing is... he thought... he assumed... mistakenly, it now turns out... but nonetheless...