She got up and came over close to me and ran the tips of her fingers gently over the cuts and swollen places on my face. “I’m sorry. I’m a tired and disappointed woman. Please be kind to me. I’m no bargain to anyone.”
“You’re not tired and you’re no more disappointed than most people are. By all the rules you ought to be the same sort of shallow spoiled promiscuous brat your sister was. By some miracle you’re not. You’ve got all the honesty and a large part of the guts in your family. You don’t need anyone to be kind to you.”
I turned and walked out of the room down the hall to the kitchen and got one of the bottles of champagne out of the icebox and popped the cork and filled a couple of shallow goblets quickly and drank one down. The sting of it brought tears to my eyes, but I emptied the glass. I filled it again. Then I put the whole works on a tray and carted it into the living room.
She wasn’t there. The overnight bag wasn’t there. I put the tray down and opened the front door. I hadn’t heard any sound of its opening and she had no car. I hadn’t heard any sound at all.
Then she spoke from behind me. “Idiot, did you think I was going to run away?”
I shut the door and turned. She had loosened her hair and she had tufted slippers on her bare feet and a silk robe the color of a sunset in a Japanese print. She came towards me slowly with a sort of unexpectedly shy smile. I held a glass out to her. She took it, took a couple of sips of the champagne, and handed it back.
“It’s very nice,” she said. Then very quietly and without a trace of acting or affectation she came into my arms and pressed her mouth against mine and opened her lips and her teeth. The tip of her tongue touched mine. After a long time she pulled her head back but kept her arms around my neck. She was starry-eyed.
“I meant to all the time,” she said. “I just had to be difficult. I don’t know why. Just nerves perhaps. I’m not really a loose woman at all. Is that a pity?”
“If I had thought you were I’d have made a pass at you the first time I met you in the bar at Victor’s.”
She shook her head slowly and smiled. “I don’t think so. That’s why I am here.”
“Perhaps not that night,” I said. “That night belonged to something else.”
“Perhaps you don’t ever make passes at women in bars.”
“Not often. The light’s too dim.”
“But a lot of women go to bars just to have passes made at them.”
“A lot of women get up in the morning with the same idea.”
“But liquor is an aphrodisiac—up to a point.”
“Doctors recommend it.”
“Who said anything about doctors? I want my champagne.”
I kissed her some more. It was light, pleasant work.
“I want to kiss your poor cheek,” she said, and did. “It’s burning hot,” she said.
“The rest of me is freezing.”
“It is not. I want my champagne.”
“Why?”
“It’ll get flat if we don’t drink it. Besides I like the taste of it.”
“All right.”
“Do you love me very much? Or will you if I go to bed with you?”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t have to go to bed with me, you know. I don’t absolutely insist on it.”
“Thank you.”
“I want my champagne.”
“How much money have you got?”
“Altogether? How would I know? About eight million dollars.”
“I’ve decided to go to bed with you.”
“Mercenary,” she said.
“I paid for the champagne.”
“The hell with the champagne,” she said.
50
An hour later she stretched out a bare arm and tickled my ear and said: “Would you consider marrying me?”
“It wouldn’t last six months.”
“Well, for God’s sake,” she said, “suppose it didn’t. Wouldn’t it be worth it? What do you expect from life—full coverage against all possible risks?”
“I’m forty-two years old. I’m spoiled by independence. You’re spoiled a little—not too much—by money.”
“I’m thirty-six. It’s no disgrace to have money and no disgrace to marry it. Most of those who have it don’t deserve it and don’t know how to behave with it. But it won’t be long. We’ll have another war and at the end of that nobody will have any money—except the crooks and the chiselers. We’ll all be taxed to nothing, the rest of
