“I will. Damned if I won’t.”
I went to the bar and got them and brought them back. I handed her a glass with a small bow, and our fingers touched. I sat down, and our knees touched.
“Why have you come back?” I said.
“Didn’t I tell you? To meet old friends.”
“I know. Old friends in general and some old friends in particular. Am I general or particular?”
“Very particular, darling. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. I’m the fellow you were going to marry before you married Wilson Thatcher.”
“Surely you can understand why it was necessary for me to marry Wilson.”
“Surely. All that money.”
“That’s correct. It was the money that made me. Several millions of dollars is a very serious temptation, you know. A girl can scarcely be blamed for yielding to it.”
“I don’t blame you. Your decision was sensible.”
“It really wasn’t a decision. It was just something that happened. We were out dancing at this place on the highway, and Wilson got loaded and wanted to make love, and I said I was saving myself for the man I married, which was almost true, if not entirely, and he said, well, let’s get married, then, and it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“Thanks for the information. There’s nothing like a primary source in the study of ancient history. The rest, however, is a matter of record. So you got married by a justice of the peace, and so you went to California a week later, and Wilson became manager of the California branch of the Thatcher factory. Shirts and jeans for the general market. Uniforms made to order. I hope you were very happy.”
“It wasn’t so bad for a while, but it didn’t last long, as you know.”
“Three years, wasn’t it?”
“Almost four. Wilson was unreasonable as a husband, but in the end he was quite agreeable.”
“So I heard. No nasty publicity at all. Just a quiet settlement between the two of you, after which you went off for a divorce. I trust that the settlement was a substantial one.”
“Oh, it seemed like a great deal of money at the time, especially when Wilson might have been able to avoid giving me anything at all; but now it doesn’t seem like so much, because it’s almost all gone.”
“So soon?”
“You know how it is when you are going different places and enjoying yourself. You become sort of careless about expenses and things.”
“What different places?”
“Places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”
“No, I don’t know. I’ve never gone to those different places.”
“They’re very expensive if you live well.”
“It’s better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all.”
It came out of me just like that, just a little differently than it had come out of Tennyson. I remembered that it was from In Memoriam, and I thought that it was appropriate, everything considered, that it happened to be. In memoriam of Gideon Jones. In memoriam of Beth Webb. Beth Webb Thatcher. In memoriam of going and gone and never, never.
“You’ll find things cheaper here,” I said.
“I don’t plan to stay, darling. Only a day or two. The truth is, I really came to see if Wilson might be willing to give me some more money. He has plenty, of course, and wouldn’t miss a little more.”
“He’s married again, you know. His wife may object to his giving money to an ex-wife with no legal claim to it.”
She laid an index finger alongside her nose and looked at me with a sly and intimate expression. “As far as that goes, Wilson himself may object a little.”
It occurred to me suddenly that there were probably people in the lounge who knew Beth and me and the brief bit of pre-Thatcher history in which we were involved. This, I knew, would be the stuff of gossip, if not of scandal, and I began to get a notion that I’d better get the hell out of there, but I didn’t want to go. What I wanted to do was stay. I had recovered a bit of gone in an hour of going, and I wanted to keep it until the last Gimlet.
I thought of my position in the community, and it made no difference. I thought of my duty as a husband, and I thought to hell with it. Then I thought of her to whom the duty was owed, sweet Sid among the singing trees of Hoolihan’s Addition, and this thought made a difference not lightly dismissed, or not dismissed at all, for the call to Sid was not merely the call to duty, odious word, but the call to later love.
One clear clarion call, I thought.
Tennyson again, for God’s sake, I thought.
“I’ve got to get the hell home,” I said.
“Do you, darling? I was hoping we could have another Gimlet.”
I stood up and looked down at her, and there she was, looking up, in her black sheath with her little black hat on her pale hair and one sheer nylon knee on top of the other. Smiling, she lifted her glass to her lips, but the glass was empty. The Gimlet was gone, all gone, and I was going.
“Mr. Gideon Jones begs to be excused,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
This was the Gimlets talking again, but I thought it was a perfect exit line, spoken with restraint and salvaged dignity, and so I turned and walked away, and there by herself at a table near the door was one of the ones who did indeed know Beth and me and our brief bit of pre-Thatcher history. Her name was Sara Pike, thirty and thin and slightly sour, and she was watching me with a carefully composed expression. She nodded and said hello, and I said hello right hack with a composure that was, I hoped, equal to hers.
“Isn’t that Beth Thatcher you were talking with?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s Beth.”
“How nice to see her after all this time. She looks hardly a day older.”
“That’s because she’s been living well in different places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”
I considered that I’d handled that minor incident with admirable deftness, too, and there was an element of pride in my sadness and sense of loss as I hit the street and headed for home. In fair weather, for exercise, I make a habit of walking. This morning I had walked to town from home, and now I walked back home from town. It was quite a way and it took quite a while. It was pretty late when I got there.
I went in the front door and through the house and out the back door, and there on the little flagstone terrace was Sid, staring at cherry-hearted bits of charcoal in the grill. She turned her head and looked up at me without speaking, and I kissed her, and we decided to hold the kiss for a while. Then she sighed and leaned against me, and I could hear her sniff.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said.
“I stopped in the Kiowa Room and had a couple of drinks.”
“The thing I like best about you, sugar, excepting a talent or two that I’m too proper to mention, is that you tell the truth under only the slightest duress. You smell like a gin mill.”
“I drank Gimlets. Gimlets are made of gin.”
“You taste like gin, too. I love gin kisses. Will you give me another?”
I gave it to her, and we held it again between us, and she raised herself on her toes to get closer to it.
“I was wishing you were dead,” she said, “but I take it back.”
“That’s all right. It would be a nice evening for dying if you didn’t have to stay dead tomorrow.”
“I always wish you were dead when you make me feel like a wife.”
“Don’t you like being a wife?”
“I don’t mind being one, I just don’t like feeling like one.”
“Would you like me to kiss you again?”
“I’d like for you to, but I don’t think you’d better.”