"What will you have?" Conrad asked.
"Could I have a martini?"
"Of course. Vodka?"
"No, gin, please."
"One gin martini," he said to the waiter. "No. Make it two. I've never been much of a drinker, Anna, as you probably remember, but I think this calls for a celebration."
The waiter went away. Conrad leaned back in his chair and studied her carefully. "You look pretty good," he said.
"You look pretty good yourself, Conrad," she told him. And so he did. It was astonishing how little he had aged in twenty-five years. He was just as lean and handsome as he'd ever been-in fact, more so. His black hair was still black, his eye was clear, and he looked altogether like a man who was no more than thirty years old.
"You are older than me, aren't you?" he said.
"What sort of a question is that?" she said, laughing. "Yes Conrad, I am exactly one year older than you. I'm forty-two."
"I thought you were." He was still studying her with the utmost care, his eyes travelling all over her face and neck and shoulders. Anna felt herself blushing.
"Are you an enormously successful doctor?" she asked. "Are you the best in town?"
He cocked his head over to one side, right over, so that the ear almost touched the top of the shoulder. It was a mannerism that Anna had always liked. "Successful?" he said. "Any doctor can be successful these days in a big city-financially, I mean. But whether or not I am absolutely first rate at my job is another matter. I only hope and pray that I am."
The drinks arrived and Conrad raised his glass and said, "Welcome to Dallas, Anna. I'm so pleased you called me up. It's good to see you again."
"It's good to see you, too, Conrad," she said, speaking the truth.
He looked at her glass. She had taken a huge first gulp, and the glass was now half empty. "You prefer gin to vodka?" he asked.
"I do," she said, "yes."
"You ought to change over."
"Why?"
"Gin is not good for females."
"It's not?"
"It's very bad for them."
"I'm sure it's just as bad for males," she said.
"Actually, no. It isn't nearly so bad for males as it is for females."
"Why is it bad for females?"
"It just is," he said. "It's the way they're built. What kind of work are you engaged in, Anna? And what brought you all the way down to Dallas? Tell me about you."
"Why is gin bad for females?" she said, smiling at him.
He smiled back at her and shook his head, but he didn't answer.
"Go on," she said.
"No, let's drop it."
"You can't leave me up in the air like this," she said. "It's not fair."
After a pause, he said, "Well, if you really want to know, gin contains a certain amount of the oil which is squeezed out of juniper berries. They use it for flavouring."
"What does it do?"
"Plenty."
"Yes, but what?"
"Horrible things."
"Conrad, don't be shy. I'm a big girl now."
He was still the same old Conrad, she thought, still as diffident, as scrupulous, as shy as ever. For that she liked him. "If this drink is really doing horrible things to me," she said, "then it is unkind of you not to tell me what those things are."
Gently, he pinched the lobe of his left ear with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Then he said, "Well, the truth of the matter is, Anna, oil of juniper has a direct inflammatory effect upon the uterus."
"Now come on!"
"I'm not joking."
"Mother's ruin," Anna said. "It's an old wives' tale."
"I'm afraid not."
"But you're talking about women who are pregnant."
"I'm talking about all women, Anna." He had stopped smiling now, and he was speaking quite seriously. He seemed to be concerned about her welfare.
"What do you specialize in?" she asked him. "What kind of medicine? You haven't told me that."
"Gynaecology and obstetrics."
"Ah-ha!"
"Have you been drinking gin for many years?" he asked.
"Oh, about twenty," Anna said.
"Heavily?"
"For heaven's sake, Conrad, stop worrying about my insides. I'd like another martini, please."
"Of course."
He called the waiter and said, "One vodka martini."
"No," Anna said, "gin."
He sighed and shook his head and said, "Nobody listens to her doctor these days."
"You're not my doctor."
"No," he said. "I'm your friend."
"Let's talk about your wife," Anna said. "Is she still as beautiful as ever?"
He waited a few moments, then he said, "Actually, we're divorced."
"Oh, no!"
"Our marriage lasted for the grand total of two years. It was hard work to keep it going even that long."
For some reason, Anna was profoundly shocked. "But she was such a beautiful girl," she said. "What happened?"
"Everything happened, everything you could possibly think of that was bad."
"And the child?"
"She got him. They always do." He sounded very bitter. "She took him back to New York. He comes to see me once a year, in the summer. He's twenty years old now. He's at Princeton."
"Is he a fine boy?"
"He's a wonderful boy," Conrad said. "But I hardly know him. It isn't much fun."
"And you never married again?"
"No, never. But that's enough about me. Let's talk about you."
Slowly, gently, he began to draw her out on the subject of her health and the bad times she had gone through after Ed's death. She found she didn't mind talking to him about it, and she told him more or less the whole story.
"But what makes your doctor think you're not completely cured?" he said. "You don't look very suicidal to me."
"I don't think I am. Except that sometimes, not often, mind you, but just occasionally, when I get depressed, I have the feeling that it wouldn't take such a hell of a big push to send me over the edge."
"In what way?"
"I kind of start edging toward the bathroom cupboard."
"What do you have in the bathroom cupboard?"
"Nothing very much. Just the ordinary equipment a girl has for shaving her legs."
"I see." Conrad studied her face for a few moments, then he said, "Is that how you were feeling just now when you called me?"
"Not quite. But I'd been thinking about Ed. And that's always a bit dangerous."
"I'm glad you called."
"So am I," she said.
Anna was getting to the end of her second martini. Conrad changed the subject and began talking about his practice. She was watching him rather than listening to him. He was so damned handsome it was impossible not to watch him. She put a cigarette between her lips, then offered the pack to Conrad.
"No thanks," he said. "I don't." He picked up a book of matches from the table and gave her a light, then he blew out the match and said, "Are those cigarettes mentholated?"
"Yes, they are."
She took a deep drag, and blew the smoke slowly up into the air. "Now go ahead and tell me that they're going to shrivel up my entire reproductive system," she said.
He laughed and shook his head.
"Then why did you ask?"
"Just curious, that's all."
"You're lying. I can tell it from your face. You were about to give me the figures for the incidence of lung cancer in heavy smokers."
"Lung cancer has nothing to do with menthol, Anna," he said, and he smiled and took a tiny sip of his original martini, which he had so far hardly touched. He set the glass back carefully on the table. "You still haven't told me what work you are doing," he went on, "or why you came to Dallas."
"Tell me about menthol first. If it's even half as bad as the juice of the juniper berry, I think I ought to know about it quick."
He laughed and shook his head.