“That’s all right. We’ll come back in cold weather when we can really eat. Darling,” she said. “This is the first sort of letdown we’ve had. So let’s not let it let us down. We’ll have long baths and some drinks and a meal twice as expensive as we can afford and we’ll go to bed and make wonderful love.”
“The hell with New Orleans in the movies,” Roger said. “We’ll have New Orleans in bed.”
“Eat first. Didn’t you order some White Rock and ice?”
“Yes. Do you want a drink?”
“No. I was just worried about you.”
“It will be along,” Roger said. There was a knock at the door. “Here it is. You get started on the tub.”
“It’s going to be wonderful,” she said. “There will just be my nose out of water and the tips of my breasts maybe and my toes and I’m going to have it just as cold as it will run.”
The bellboy brought the pitcher of ice, the bottled water and the papers, took his tip and went out.
Roger made a drink and settled down to read. He was tired and it felt good to lie back on the bed with two pillows folded under his neck and read the evening and the morning papers. Things were not so good in Spain but it had not really taken shape yet. He read all the Spanish news carefully in the three papers and then read the other cable news and then the local news.
“Are you all right, darling?” Helena called from the bathroom.
“I’m wonderful.”
“Have you undressed?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have anything on?”
“No.”
“Are you very brown?”
“Still.”
“Do you know where we swam this morning was the loveliest beach I’ve ever seen.”
“I wonder how it can get so white and so floury.”
“Darling are you very, very brown?”
“Why?”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“Being in cold water’s supposed to be good for that.’
“I’m brown under the water. You’d like it.”
“I like it.”
“You keep on reading,” she said. “You are reading aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is Spain all right?”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry. Is it very bad?”
“No. Not yet. Really.”
“Roger?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“You go back and read now. I’ll think about that here underwater.”
Roger lay back and listened to the noises that came up from the street below and read the papers and drank his drink. This was almost the best hour of the day. It was the hour he had always gone to the cafe alone when he had lived in Paris, to read the evening papers and have his aperitif. This town was nothing like Paris nor was it like Orleans either. Orleans wasn’t much of a town either. It was pleasant enough though. Probably a better town to live in than this one. He didn’t know the environs of this town though and he knew he was stupid about it.
He had always liked New Orleans, the little that he knew of it, but it was a letdown to anyone who expected very much. And this certainly was not the month to hit it in.
The best time he had ever hit it was with Andy one time in the winter and another time driving through with David. The time going north with Andy they had not come through New Orleans. They had bypassed it to the north to save time and driven north of Lake Pontchartrain and across through Hammond to Baton Rouge on a new road that was being built so they made many detours and then they had gone north through Mississippi in the southern edge of the blizzard that was coming down from the north. When they had hit New Orleans was coming south again. But it was still cold and they had a wonderful time eating and drinking and the city had seemed gay and sharp with cold, instead of moist and damp and Andy had roamed all the antique shops and bought a sword with his Christmas money. He kept the sword in the luggage compartment behind the seat in the car and slept with it in his bed at night.
When he and David had come through it had been in the winter and they had made their headquarters in that restaurant he would have to try to find, the non-tourist one. He remembered it as in a cellar and having teakwood tables and chairs or else they sat on benches. It was probably not like that and was like a dream and he did not remember its name nor where it was located except he thought it was in the opposite direction from Antoine’s, on an east and west, not a north and south street, and he and David had stayed in there two days. He probably had it mixed up with some other place. There was a place in Lyons and another near the Parc Monceau that always were merged in his dreams. That was one of the things about being drunk when you were young. You made places in your mind that afterwards you could never find and they were better than any places could ever be. He knew he hadn’t been to this place with Andy though.
“I’m coming out,” she said.
“Feel how cool,” she said on the bed. “Feel how cool all the way down. No don’t go away. I like you.”
“No. Let me take a shower.”
“If you want. But I’d rather not. You don’t wash the pickled onions do you before you put them in the cocktail? You don’t wash the vermouth do you?”
“I wash the glass and the ice.”
“It’s different. You’re not the glass and the ice. Roger, please do that again. Isn’t again a nice word?”
“Again and again,” he said.
So tly he felt the lovely curve from her hip bone up under her ribs and the apple slope of her breasts.
“I it a good curve?”
He kissed her breasts and she said, “Be awfully careful when they’re so cold. Be very careful and kind. Do you know about them aching?”
“Yes,” he said. “I know about aching.”
Then she said, “The other one is jealous.”
Later she said, “They didn’t plan things right for me to have two breasts and you only one way to kiss. They made everything so far apart.”
His hand covered the other, the pressure between the fingers barely touching and then his lips wandered up over all the lovely coolness and met hers. They met and brushed very lightly, sweeping from side to side, losing nothing of the lovely outer screen and then he kissed her.
“Oh darling,” she said. “Oh please darling. My dearest kind lovely love. Oh please, please, please my dear love.”
After quite a long time she said, “I’m so sorry if I was selfish about your bath. But when I came out of mine I was selfish.”
“You weren’t selfish.”
“Roger, do you still love me?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you change how you feel afterwards?”
“No,” he lied.
“I don’t at all. I just feel better afterwards. I mustn’t tell you.”
“You tell me.”
“No. I won’t tell you too much. But we do have a lovely time don’t we?”
“Yes,” he said very truthfully.
