side of her worktable was pushed to the wall directly underneath it. The wings of the window were normally cranked out to their maximum extension. She would be sitting with her left side to the screened and barred view of the servants’ quarters fifty feet away. An arbor supporting a system of dead vines framed her view. On the tabletop, in addition to the newspaper, was a dust-hooded bulky typewriter set to one side and a tray of office necessities, like ballpoint pens, Wite-Out, type cleaner, and postage.
As he’d hoped she would, she began to read aloud.
“We are house-sitting in Sausalito for a public relations couple (People of the Fib) vacationing in Lappland. I should say ‘estate-sitting.’ It’s going to be a long three weeks. The man I’m with, Joel, I chose for this because he was verbal looking. He really isn’t verbal. People around here are being extremely social toward us. This is an area with many children deformed by utter wealth. In the next house we heard a child screaming because a swimming pool, which they have, isn’t enough. He wants them to get a water bloom (fountainlike thing). He is on strike and won’t go into the water. We heard his mother try to explain that water blooms are just trick things to make people satisfied when all they can have is (lowclass) aboveground pools, whereas they have this splendid in-ground pool. But he won’t go in the water. Sausalito would be a good place for you to adjust to the fact, when you come back (and you are going to come back), that you now rather often see vanity in the faces of young children. I mean of the permanent, adult sort, not the fleeting kind any child gets when he or she figures out that he or she got the best Xmas present in his or her circle of friends that year. You see it more and more, and in children of both sexes. I feel I must prepare you. And it’s not only in Marin County. By the way, isn’t my handwriting more appropriate now? You complained that I was writing too bigly for airletters and sort of cheating you of information. But that is my natural handwriting and look how small I’m making it for you herewith.
“There are many hazards in this place of wealth. This morning Joel came out of the bathroom scowling and saying ‘Ow, I just burned my ass on the towel warmer.’ Joel is normally very silent, except when he hurts himself. I think I deserve someone more verbal than he.
“I myself live a very moral life, of my own sort. I try to live as though there’s never anything good on television. That’s why I get so much more done in my waking hours, which is a necessity because I’m self- employed. I am thinking of starting a new religion for the self-employed. It would be based on the never-anything- good-on-TV premise and would have as its main sin not returning telephone calls. I’m out of a job, incidentally, in a de facto way. I was working for a patter service, an outfit that mass-produces clever lines for politicians and celebrities to pretend they thought of themselves. I was doing pretty well with them and then I just turned noir and then went dry. I tried to produce things the rabid right could make use of. One was ‘Homebodies are Somebodies.’ The service thought I was being mocking. I think I got in a rut out of rage at the Roman Catholic Church. Everything I thought of was quasi-antireligious, which nobody is buying these days. Here’s a discard: ‘Aside from that, Mrs. Iscariot, did your husband enjoy supper?’
“Here’s a little tip for when you return: NEVER ask professional people whose children are probably out of college a while what their children are doing, or even how they are doing. The chances are overwhelmingly high that their children are dysfunctional. And you can be sure that if a child is doing anything that suggests some degree of coping THIS WILL BE VOUCHSAFED TO YOU. Last night a proud father was bragging that his son was working as a sommelier. He was telling EVERYONE.
“That’s all for now. My love to you. You belong in America. Rex.”
She turned to an earlier letter.
“Nothing good is happening. My commode runneth over. We went to a thing of French chamber music, and how boring
The reading stopped. She must have realized he was there.
Here I am,” Ray said, and waited for the scrape of chair feet on the linoleum. Do not touch the door, he instructed himself. He wanted to know if she had locked it. Occasionally, these days, she did. There was a knob-controlled bolt lock on her side of the door that operated quietly, so that it was hard to hear the bolt being retracted. He stilled himself. This was her room of her own and the door could be locked if she wanted and that was fine. If something should happen to her in there when the door was locked, he could break in, so there was nothing to worry about. She was taking her time. She liked referring to her room as her den, lately. She needed a decent worklight on her table but it was clear she was going to stick to her claim that all she needed was the ceiling light, despite the fact that she was on record saying that she hated fluorescent light and that it was like gray dust. She was putting something away.
She was stubborn. She could call her cell anything she liked, den included, but the truth was it wasn’t a room of her own in the full sense. She could only accept a room all for herself if it was actively in use for some other purpose as well. That was obviously why she was still finding things to box up and store in there. Which was unnecessary because there was plenty of space in the garage. It had been his idea for her to take one of the side rooms for herself, and now she used it all the time. He was going to put a circulating fan in there, and she could take it and put it in a box and seal it up and put a number on the box if she wanted to. But he was going to put a fan in there. He could do the same thing with a table lamp. He thought. No, it was bright dust she compared fluorescent light to. And the linoleum was ugly, it was the color of raw liver and had sunwelts in it. He could get her a reed mat at Botswanacraft. She was coming to the door.
He stood against the wall opposite her door, listening. There was no indication the door had been locked. It opened smoothly and she came out to embrace him.
It never changed for him, seeing her again after a day’s separation, or even less. He felt a flowing, objectless gratitude so strong it weakened him. He wanted her touch. It was permanent with him. She put her hands on him and slipped one hand through the unbuttoned top of his shirt. She was wearing a plain white sundress and she was barefoot. The shape of her heavy hair against the light and the scent of it as he put his face into her hair were perfections, were absolute things. He was forty-eight. She was thirty-eight. A pleasure he had was catching flashes of surprise in people’s expressions when she told her age, which she was always truthful about. He often had the satisfaction of seeing people look at him, obviously wondering what it was about him that they weren’t seeing that made it reasonable for a woman of this quality to be with him, be his. He had always looked his exact age. And he also liked seeing them being given pause by someone at her level of physical beauty dealing with people so much more nicely than she should be, on their past experience of great beauties, which she was, which she was. These were instantaneous moments, but real. She was a democrat, a spiritual democrat. And then with women, and gay men too, sometimes, he would get the moment when they tried subtly to ascertain if they could possibly be right in their first impression that Iris was wearing hardly any makeup. There was a way they widened their eyes briefly and then focused again. Iris wore next to no makeup.
He wanted the touch of her breath on his throat. When they embraced after being separate that was what he wanted first.
“You are so beautiful,” she said.
“So say we all,” he said, being wry.
A line came to him,
