In short shorts, approached from behind, Sid is delectable, to say the least, and my normal reaction to her, when I am the one approaching, is organic and emphatic, but in this instance the reaction was somewhat qualified by a kind of subtle pathos that may have been more a subjective matter of me and gin than any impression she actually gave. Anyhow, she looked deserted with her broiled tails and drawn butter, as if she had waited and waited for someone to come, which was true, and was now waiting on and on in the knowledge that no one ever would, which was not. The cicadas were raising hell in an oak, and I felt like a son of a bitch.
Crossing the terrace to where she was, I exercised a husband’s prerogative and took a mild liberty with the near half of her compact bottom. She turned her head and looked up at me without speaking, and I kissed her, and we decided to hold the kiss for a while. Then she sighed and leaned against me, and I could hear her sniff. “Where the hell have you been?” she said.
“I stopped in the Kiowa Room and had a couple of drinks.”
“They must have been big ones, the time they took.”
“Not so big. As a matter of fact, I had four.”
“The thing I like best about you, sugar, excepting a talent or two that I’m too proper to mention, is that you tell the truth under only the slightest duress. You smell like a gin mill.”
“I drank gimlets. Gimlets are made of gin.”
“I know, sugar. And lime juice and a slice of cucumber. You taste like gin too. I love gin lasses. Will you give me another?”
I gave it to her, and we held it again between us, and she raised herself on her toes to get closer to it.
“I was wishing you were dead,” she said, “but I take it back.”
“That’s all right. It would be a nice evening for dying if you didn’t have to stay dead tomorrow.”
“I always wish you were dead when you make me feel like a wife. Sometimes I curse you a little as well.”
“Don’t you like being a wife?”
“I don’t mind being one. I just don’t like feeling like one.”
“What do you like to feel like?”
“Like just now, for one thing. When you were kissing me and petting my fanny.”
“You’re in luck. The two conditions you have mentioned are likely to recur frequently.”
“Well, I’m pleased to acknowledge that they have in the past, and so I’m naturally hopeful that they will continue to do so in the future.”
“Would you like me to kiss you again this very moment?”
“I’d like for you to, but I don’t think you’d better. The last time made me pretty excited, and we might never get around to having dinner if you did it again.”
“I could modify it a little, if you like, by not petting your fanny.”
“No. I’d rather have no kiss at all than a modified one. Modified kisses are what make one feel more like a wife than anything else.”
“I’ll make a note of that. Not that a note will be necessary, of course. I see that you’ve been broiling rock lobster tails.”
“Yes. When you came, I was just wondering what the hell to do with them. They’ve been done for ages and are surely too tough to eat.”
“Let’s try. It’ll be a challenge.”
“There’s a salad and a bottle of white Burgundy in the refrigerator, but I don’t suppose it would be a good idea for you to drink the Burgundy on top of all that gin.”
“Now that you’ve mentioned it, I insist upon the Burgundy. What’s so unthinkable, I’d like to know, about drinking gin and wine? Aren’t you aware that Martinis, surely among the most commonly consumed of all cocktails, are a mixture of gin and wine?”
“That’s true, isn’t it? Vermouth is wine, and you mix it with gin to make a Martini. Isn’t it odd that I’d never thought of that?”
“A very little bit, however. The vermouth in a Martini, properly proportioned, is just barely there.”
“Well, this is just a little bottle of white Burgundy, and so I guess it will be all right for you to drink half of it after all. We can eat out here, if you want to. There’s still enough light, and the table’s all set.”
“I want to. I’ll take up the tails while you’re getting the salad and the white Burgundy.”
She went across the terrace and into the kitchen, and I went over to the glass and wrought iron terrace table, with two places set, and got the two plates and carried them back to the charcoal grill. I put a pair of tails on each plate and returned with them to the table. Then I went back again to the grill and put on a padded glove and got the pan of drawn butter. I was pouring the butter with a careful eye to equality into two little pots, one by each plate, when Sid came out with the salad and the wine. We sat down together at the table, and she began to transfer the salad with a big wooden spoon and fork from a large bowl to two smaller bowls, while I began to pour the wine. The wine was a good domestic brand from a vineyard in California. It was chilled just right. The rock lobster tails were slightly tough from overcooking, thanks to me, but they were good, nevertheless, because, after all, how tough can a lobster tail get?
“Did you see
