“Have you also learned that he’s married again?”
“Yes. Marriage is the perfect estate for Wilson. It gives him someone to bully.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible that his wife may object to his giving money to an ex-wife with no legal claim to it?”
“So far as that goes, Wilson himself may object a little.” She laid an index finger alongside her nose and looked at me with a sly and intimate expression. “In connection with his wife, it will be necessary to practice a certain amount of deception.”
She drank the last of her second gimlet, and I drank the last of my fourth, and it occurred to me that there were probably quite a few people in the lounge who knew me, and some who would remember Beth, and of these there would certainly be a percentage who would recall the brief bit of pre-Thatcher history in which we were involved together. This, I knew, could be the stuff of gossip, if not of scandal, a meaty conversation piece for social gatherings, and I began to get a notion that I’d better get the hell out of there, but I didn’t want to go. What I wanted to do was stay. I had recovered a bit of gone in an hour of going, and I wanted to keep it until the last gimlet. Not that I was filled with derring-do, a rash readiness to sacrifice all for gin and old love. I was only sad. I was merely filled with aches and pains and cicada sounds. I wanted a kiss for auld lang syne and a last good-by to what would never be.
I thought of my position in the community, and it made no difference. I thought of my duty as a husband, and I thought to hell with it. Then I thought of her to whom the duty was owed, sweet Sid in short shorts probably this instant broiling rock lobster tails or sirloin strips on the charcoal grill on the back terrace at home, a sad husband’s haven deep among the singing trees of Hoolihan’s Addition, fine homes on easy terms with practically nothing down, and this thought made a difference not lightly dismissed, or not dismissed at all, for the call to Sid was not merely the call to duty, odious word, but the call to pleasure and later love.
One clear clarion call, I thought.
Tennyson again, for God’s sake, I thought.
“I’ve got to get the hell home,” I said.
“Do you, darling? How too bad. I was hoping we could have another gimlet. Why can’t we?”
“Because, in my case, another gimlet is a myth. There couldn’t possibly be such a thing as another gimlet. There could only be gimlet upon gimlet, ad infinitum in an eternal night. Then, contradictory though it may seem, there would be tomorrow. It is the prospect of that gray tomorrow which compels me to excuse myself tonight.”
“Perhaps tonight would be worth it. Perhaps, after tonight, all your tomorrows wouldn’t matter.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Yes, darling.”
“RSVP?”
“Yes, darling. In English.”
I stood up and looked down at her, and there she was, looking up, in her black sheath with her little black hat on her pale hair and one sheer nylon knee on top of the other. It was a time of trial, I mean, and I was a long way from feeling full of beans and certitude and holy resolution. What kept me clean for the moment, I think, was only a curious lassitude. Smiling, she lifted her glass to her lips, but the glass was empty. The gimlet was gone, all gone, and I was going.
“Mr. Gideon Jones begs to be excused,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
She smiled and shrugged and set down the empty glass. “No matter, darling. Tell me good-by and run along home.”
“I’ve already told you good-by. Seven years ago.”
This was the gimlets talking again, but I thought it was a perfect exit line, spoken with restraint and salvaged dignity, and so I turned and walked away before I could say something else to spoil it, and there by herself at a table near the door was one of the ones who did indeed know me and Beth and our brief bit of pre-Thatcher history. Her name was Sara Pike, thirty and thin and slightly sour, and she was watching me with that carefully composed expression which can somehow be more of an indictment than a salvo by a Savonarola or even a Billy Graham. There were several packages on the table in front of her, surrounding something with a cherry floating in it, and she had obviously stopped in for a drink after shopping before going home. She smiled at me, but she didn’t mean it. She nodded and said hello, and I said hello right back with a composure that was, I hoped, equal to hers.
“Isn’t that Beth Thatcher you were talking with?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s Beth.”
“How nice to see her after all this time. She looks hardly a day older, does she?”
“That’s because she’s been living well in different places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”
“Really? I must go over and speak to her.”
“You do that. I’m sure she’d be delighted.”
I considered that I’d handled that minor incident with admirable deftness too, and there was an element of pride in my sadness and sense of loss as I hit the street and headed home. In fair weather, for the sake of exercise, I make a habit of walking. This morning I had walked to town from home, and now I walked home from town. It was quite a way and took quite a while. It was pretty late when I got there.
CHAPTER 3
I went in the front door and through the house and out the back door, and there on the little flagstone terrace was Sid. The sun was down, but there was still plenty of light left to last another hour, and Sid was standing there in this late, soft light in her short shorts
