“I could modify it a little if you like.”
“No. I’d rather have no kiss at all than a modified one. Modified kisses are what make one feel more like a wife than anything else.”
“I’ll make a note of that. Not that a note will be necessary. I see that you’ve been broiling rock lobster tails.”
“I was just wondering what to do with them. They’ve been done for ages and are surely too tough to eat.”
“Let’s try. It’ll be a challenge.”
“There’s salad and a bottle of white Burgundy in the refrigerator. We can eat out here if you want to. There’s still enough light, and the table’s all set.”
“I want to. I’ll take up the tails while you’re getting the salad and the white Burgundy.”
She went across the terrace and into the kitchen, and I was pouring drawn butter into two little pots when she came out with the salad and the wine. The wine was a good domestic brand from a vineyard in California. It was chilled just right. The rock lobster tails were slightly tough from overcooking, thanks to me, but they were good, nevertheless, because, after all, how tough can a lobster tail get?
“Did you see anyone we know at the Kiowa Room?” Sid said.
“I saw Sara Pike,” I said, “and someone I used to know before you and I met. Beth Thatcher. Used to be Beth Webb. She was a girl around town.”
Sid dipped a bite of tail into her little butter pot and popped it into her mouth.
“I’ve heard about her,” she said.
“To tell the truth, we went together for a while.”
“That’s one of the things I heard.”
“She married Wilson Thatcher and went out to California with him. Later they were divorced, and he came back without her when he took over the local factory. Now she’s in town for a day or two, and so I sat around and had a couple of drinks with her.”
“That’s fine, sugar. Two drinks with an old girl friend are quite permissible, even if it does mean keeping me waiting and waiting while the God-damn lobster tails get tougher and tougher.”
“She asked me to buy her a drink, so what the hell could I do? I had to be courteous, at least.”
“Of course you did, sugar, and I admire you tremendously for it. If you keep practicing, you may even become courteous enough to come to dinner on time.”
“Oh, hell. If you don’t want to be treated like a wife, you’d better try not to act like one.”
“Now, why in hell would you make a remark like that? Have I said a single thing to justify your calling me a dirty name?”
“Oh, cut it out, Sid. Please do. I’m sorry I was late, and I’m sorry I had the damn drinks with Beth.”
“Well, now that you’re properly contrite, I may as well admit that I may have been a little unreasonable about it. I think it was mostly because you came directly home afterward and covered me with gin kisses. Anyhow, we must become reconciled without delay, because I have to go over to Rose Pogue’s for a conference. She and I are conducting the next session of our discussion group, you know, and tonight is absolutely the last chance we’ll have to get together and plan things.”
“Why do you have to have a conference? Couldn’t you each just take a part and plan it alone?”
“No, no, sugar. Not possibly. We need to talk things over.”
“Well, if you must have a conference, why must it be so late? It’s already eight thirty.”
“Honest to God? Sugar, I simply must take a shower and dress and run. Would you mind too much clearing away the things? There are only a few, and you can simply put them in the sink and leave them.”
She went inside, and I sat there and finished the white Burgundy. It was pretty dark now, and the moon and a mess of stars were getting bright in the sky. A mosquito began buzzing around my head. I made a couple of passes at it, but it wouldn’t go away, and after a minute or two I got up and cleared the table and carried the things into the kitchen. I left the things in the sink, as Sid had suggested, and went upstairs.
Sid was out of the shower but not yet out of the bathroom. I sat down on the edge of the bed in our room and waited for her to come out. Pretty soon she did, as brown and lustrous as a polished acorn, and walked over to the closet and took down a sleeveless dress, pale yellow cotton, that she was going to wear. She pulled it over her head and backed up to me for zipping and then walked over to her dressing table and began to brush her short brown hair with quick strokes.
“Did you clear the table?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
She put the brush on the dressing table and shoved her feet into white flats and came over and sat down on my lap. “Sugar, I’m sorry to run. Really I am. What will you do while I’m gone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe read. Maybe listen to music. How long will you be?”
“It’s hard to tell. Quite a while, I imagine. You know how Rose is about things. She insists upon considering every little detail that might or might not be important.”
“Try to be back soon,” I said.
She kissed me then and got up and went out, and I watched her go. Slim brown legs below the yellow skirt. Bare brown arms and slender brown neck bearing erectly her proud brown head. I could hear her going down the stairs. I heard the door slam.
Well, she was gone.
She had deserted me without appreciable concern just when I was full of vague apprehensions and sorrows, to say nothing at all of gin and white Burgundy and lobster tails, and was peculiarly susceptible, as a consequence, to all sorts of idiocies.
I got from the bed where I was still sitting after being kissed and deserted, and went downstairs and washed and dried all the things I had left in the sink. I put the things away in proper places and went out onto the back terrace and looked up at the moon and the mess of stars. I sat down in a canvas sling chair and smoked three cigarettes, which helped to keep the mosquitoes away, and then I went back inside and found a bottle of gin and made a batch of Gimlets with Rose’s lime juice.
In the living room, carrying a Gimlet in a glass, I thought I might as well listen to some music, and so I went over to the record cabinet to see what I could find that would seem appropriate to the kind of night it was and the kind of mood I was in. I am ordinarily a Haydn man, and will choose something by Haydn seven times out of ten, but tonight old Papa struck me as being a little too damn cheerful, and so I looked through the records until I came to Death and Transfiguration, by Richard Strauss, who was a good composer, too, and I knew at once that this was exactly it.
I put the record on the player and sat down to listen and drink the Gimlet. I drank two Gimlets while listening, and then I started the record again and poured another Gimlet, and I was drinking the third Gimlet and listening to the Largo, the very first part of the piece, when the phone began to ring in the hall.
I went out into the hall and answered it, and a voice said, “Is that you, Gid?” and it was a voice you would instantly know if you had ever heard it before, which I had, and the last time I’d heard it, after seven years, was that very afternoon in the Kiowa Room. I had been trying not to think of Beth, and I had been doing pretty well at it, all in all, especially when Sid had been around as a distraction, but now Sid was gone, lost temporarily to Rose Pogue, and Beth’s unforgettable voice had just spoken softly into my ear over a long wire, and for a moment it was just like back there before the lean years, and I had the same sharp, poignant feeling that I used to have then.
What had Beth said? Hadn’t she asked if it was I?
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
“I’m so glad you’re home, darling. What are you doing?”