There is only one message on her answering machine when they get back to her apartment at eleven that Wednesday night. It is from Rickie Diaz.
“Hi, Kate,” he says, “who’s that answering your machine?”
“None of your business,” she says.
“I was hoping I could see you this Friday night. I have tickets for the Mets game, and I thought you might like to go with me.”
“Nope,” Kate says.
“I don’t know if you like baseball or not...”
“I hate baseball.”
“...but let me know either way, okay? You have the number, give me a call. Thanks.”
“Friday night, I’ll be down in New Hope,” Kate says, and tosses the gossamer jacket over the back of a chair.
“I have to call Helen,” David says.
“Sure,” she answers. “I’ll go hide in the bathroom.”
She blows a kiss at him, and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. As he dials the number in Menemsha, he hears the water running. He is on the phone with Helen for perhaps five minutes, telling her he went to this place in the Village, highly recommended by New York magazine, where he had a steak and, oh, guess what, he ran into Chris and Melanie Fielding, they both send their love. Annie gets on the phone, wanting to know when he’ll be coming home — both girls already think of the Menemsha cottage as home — and he tells them he’ll be up on Saturday morning, and she tells him she caught a frog and she has him in a jar and his name is Kermit. In the background, David hears Jenny say, “How original.” He speaks to her for a few minutes, and then Helen gets back on the line and they talk for a few minutes more before they say goodnight.
A narrow line of light is showing under the bathroom door.
The water is still running.
“Kate?” he calls softly.
The air conditioner is clattering noisily.
“Kate?”
He walks to the bathroom door and knocks gently.
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course. Come in.”
The bathroom is full of steam. She is lying in the tub under a mountain of bubbles. Her hair is wrapped in a white towel, a single red tendril curling on her forehead like a tiny wet serpent. Her arm comes out of the water. She turns off the faucet, and then pats the rim of the tub. “Come sit,” she says.
Soapsuds cling to her fingers.
There is an odd little smile on her face.
He sits on the edge of the tub.
She slides deeper under the suds, closes her eyes, rests the back of her head on the white porcelain rim. “Do you remember the movie 1984?” she asks.
“Yes?”
“Where the thing he fears most, the hero, I forget his name...”
“Smith.”
“Yes, he fears rats more than anything in the world. And what they do to him, what Richard Burton does to him, is put this cage over his face where there’s a rat in one end of it, but the rat can’t get at his face because there’s a sort of partition that keeps him away. What Burton is trying to do is get John Hurt... that’s who played the hero... to betray his girlfriend, her name is Julia. So he starts opening this little partition that separates Hurt’s face from the rat, this little sort of gate that pulls up, or to the side, I forget which, and as it’s starting to open Hurt yells, ‘Do it to Julia!’ I was thinking of that before you knocked on the door,” she says.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Richard Burton opening the gate. I just happened to think of it.”
“Who’s Julia?” he asks.
“The girl in the movie.”
“Yes, but you mentioned her once before.”
“I don’t know anyone named Julia.”
“But don’t you remember saying...?”
“Even when I read the book, I found that scene frightening.”
“When was that?”
“The summer I worked at the Playhouse.”
“The summer you were thirteen?”
“Yes. But, listen, David, if you’re going to play shrink, I’ve been over this a hundred times already, really. I don’t enjoy...”
“Over what?”
“What happened. I was in analysis for six years, you know. Jacqueline and I...”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“What happened.”
“At the theater? With Charlie?”
“No. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“What happened, Kate?”
“I’ve talked about it enough. I’m sick of talking about it. I’m sick of my goddamn sister and her goddamn prob—”
“Did it have something to do with your sister?”
“No.”
“You told me she set the house on fire...”
“That was three years later. I also told you I don’t want to talk about it!”
“Who’s Julia?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t you remember saying something about my doing it to Julia...”
“No.”
“...on the Vineyard...”
“No.”
“...when I should have been doing it to you?”
“I never said anything like that.”
“Yesterday morning. In the car.”
“I know your wife’s name is Helen. Anyway, let’s not talk about her, either. And you’d better not be doing it to her.”
“Why’d she try to kill your father?”
“Who, Helen?”
“Kate, you know who I’m...”
“Who, Julia?”
“Your sister. Who’s in a maximum security hospital for the criminally...”
“Go ask her, you’re so interested.”
The room goes silent. She nods in curt dismissal. The mirror over the sink is dripping with mist. Everything looks slippery and wet.
“Put your hand in the water,” she says.
The same little smile reappears on her face.
“No sharks in here,” she says playfully.
Tilts her head to one side. Towel wrapped around it like a turban.
“Give me your hand, okay?” she says.
Smiling.
“Don’t you want to?”
Lifting one eyebrow.
“Say.”
Her voice turning suddenly harsh.
“Do it!”
He plunges his hand into the foam, wetting his sleeve to the elbow.
“Yes,” she says.
And finds her.
“Yes.”
“I want to get away for a few days,” he hears himself telling Stanley. “Tonight and tomorrow night. Go down to New Hope maybe. Or someplace else in Pennsylvania. I’ll fly back to the Vineyard on Saturday, from wherever I happen to be.”
“Why?”
Careful, he thinks.
“I’m getting cabin fever,” he says.
“But I’m not, Davey.”
Davey? he thinks. When did I get to be Davey? Just when I was getting used to being Dave.
Stanley has taken the subway downtown to Fifty-ninth and Lex, and has met David outside Bloomingdale’s, as arranged. Their Thursday morning stroll takes place on East Fifty-seventh Street as the two men saunter westward toward Victoria’s Secret, where Stanley hopes to purchase lingerie suitable for his nineteen-year-old delight.
“I don’t want to leave the city,” he says. “I even hate having to go out for food. So why would I choose to go to New Hope, of all places? I’m perfectly happy doing just what I’m doing. Life is sweet, Davey, and time is short.”
He is dressed for his lingerie-shopping expedition in clothes that look as if he’s slept in them. Perhaps he has. Aside from Tuesday night’s visit to Bertinelli’s, he and Cindy have not budged from his office. His beard has grown several inches since the last time David saw him. He looks like a homeless person who hasn’t shaved in a month. A derelict who sleeps on the sidewalk in a cardboard box or else on a black leather couch in some philandering psychiatrist’s office. He can’t wait to get back to his little Cindy. He wants to buy her some crotchless panties and a garter belt...