Crobey hiked up on one elbow and helped himself to a snack. Holding the cracker in his hand, regarding it, he mused. “For what you’re about to receive may you be truly thankful, Harry.”
“Do you have any children?”
“Probably not.”
He’d have been a good father, she thought; he had the strength to be gentle.
Robert...
Robert, she thought, looking at Crobey’s naked form, would have liked Crobey. Robert had no snobbery.
She had no fear of Crobey now.
She said, “That was terrific, you know.”
“It’s an old trick I learned in the South Seas,” he told her gravely. “What the Trobriand Islanders call the missionary position.”
“You’re demented.”
Crobey laughed casually. “Maybe I am. Hell, I don’t know what I am any longer.”
“What’s the matter, Harry?”
“I don’t know. Postcoital depression.”
“Tell me.” She’d buried her face in the hollow of his throat; her voice came up muffled.
He said, “Will you promise not to laugh if I tell you something?”
“No, but I’ll promise to try not to laugh.”
“Supercilious bitch.”
“Ill-mannered lout.”
He said, “Would you find it possible to believe a slob like me could ever long for the sanctuary of a home?”
“Why not? Everybody needs a hand to hold onto. Even me.”
“Right. Somebody to be around to pick up the soap when I drop it in the shower.” He stirred, hooking a leg over her; his fingertips trailed up her spine. “I’m a mean tough two-headed son of a bitch, ducks. My job is terror. I did it, you know, for a while, believing in it. Then it was just a job. You fly them in, you fly them out. They put bombs in the plane and point you at a target and you go. You can destroy them so easily. The day comes when for the first time in your life you realize you can’t just keep killing them. You can’t ever kill them all. I’m too old for this foolishness and too far gone to repent. Going downhill and maybe getting scared — I never was any good at coping with failure. I’m trying to learn to accept my changing limitations, I expect, but it’s hardly a propitious moment for — this, you and me, us. Shit, why should I tell you all this?”
“Maybe it’s time you told someone.”
“Thing is, I’d tucked myself into a hole in the ground over there in Nassau to try and sort myself out — I was ready to chuck it in, find myself another line of work. Then you hit me with recollections of your brother Warren, who was a guy I liked and maybe owed. I didn’t think much of this job, you know. I thought you were around the bend. But you were right up there on your supercilious high horse and I never sat at a table over drinks with a woman like you before. I got it into my head to take care of two things. I was going to take you down off the high horse and I was going to get you into bed to prove you weren’t any different from any other woman.”
“You succeeded.”
“Wrong, ducks. Nobody’s ever going to knock you down and as for the other thing, you’re not the same as any other woman.”
“Why not?”
“Because no other woman ever got to me the way you do.”
“Go to sleep now, Harry.”
“Right.” And, amazingly, he did.
She drifted in a soft haze of contentment, not trying to think. Her awareness was limited to the physical present: the weight of his hard body against her, the sound and warm flutter of his breathing, the rise and fall of his ribcage under her outflung arm, the abrasive stubble on his cheek.
After a time she heard him whimper softly in his sleep.
She woke up feeling an absolute wreck; she opened her eyes slowly and Crobey took on a sort of surrealistic substance limned in red — the back of his head: Somehow he’d contrived to roll over without knocking them both off the cot.
She got up gingerly, ran her tongue over her front teeth and stumbled outside carrying rudiments of clothing. By the time she mastered the use of the eccentric outdoor shower she was in a state of shimmering rage.
Crobey laughed at her.
“Shut up,” she told him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh. I see. You grind your teeth every morning at eight, that’s all.”
“One of the basic freedoms is the right to be irritable before breakfast, all right?”
“Come on,” he said, “come over here.”
“Can’t you see I need to be left alone right now?”
“Be reasonable.”
“No.” In high dudgeon she left the room, hauling the doorknob after her, and winced when the door slammed.
In the kitchen she got out her compact and looked critically into its mirror. Then Crobey appeared, naked, a bath towel in his fist. She backed up against the sink to let him pass. Crobey made as if to walk by, then turned and pinioned her.
He was grinning: His face came down on hers but she kept her lips stiff and still under his.
Crobey lifted his face away. “Come on back to the bedroom.”
“Man does not live by bed alone.”
He backed away, defeated. “A record-breaking fit of pique.”
“Beat it. I feel my temper going.”
“I can see that. You’re more than just a bit glacial today, considering. Wasn’t it Catherine the Great who commanded the farm serfs into her bed at night and ordered them back to the fields next morning?”
“Harry, please, for Heaven’s sake!”
He went.
By the time he returned — hair all wet down, towel strapped around his middle — she had fried four eggs and poured coffee. They sat facing each other across the Salvation Army table and she pushed the eggs around on her plate with a fork until Crobey said, “Stop looking like an injured cocker spaniel.”
“Shut up. Will you please just shut up?”
“What the hell do you think I am, ducks? An extra on your movie set?”
“You’re leading the witness,” she warned.
“Come on. Spit it out.”
She almost upset the coffee when she reached for it. Vexed, she lifted it with great care and drank from it and set it down, absurdly proud of the fact that she hadn’t spilled a drop.
Finally she said, “You just don’t give a shit, do you.”
“About what?”
“Last night. Me. Anything.”
“Come again?”
“‘The world is my whorehouse,’” she said bitterly. “Well you proved what you wanted to prove. You could get me into bed just like any other woman.” She mocked him: “Ah, ducks, take it easy, what the fuck, a little roll in the hay never hurt anybody.”
Crobey put his fork down and laid both palms on the table. “Now listen to me: Don’t confuse someone who doesn’t parade his feelings with someone who doesn’t have any feelings. You think it was a game? A one-nighter?”
Subdued, she said, “I wouldn’t care, if only—”
“If only what?”
She began to cry then — surreptitiously at first, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but it turned into great gasping heaves and she didn’t know how but he somehow got her up and guided her into the front room and sat her down on the couch and folded her against him so that she cried it out with her face buried against his hirsute chest, baptizing him with her tears, clinging to him, clutching him in an insane desperation because sometime during the night she had awakened and realized with a sudden explosion of terror that she would not be able to bear it if he left her.