Tonight, however, he had an idea. It was merely an image, that was all, but it fascinated him. He saw an attractive, middle-aged woman standing in front of a large fire. She was disillusioned. Why? He did not yet know. But he had a couplet:
Why am I bitter? Here’s a cryptic hint:
The hottest fire springs from the coldest flint.
He very desperately wished he had the opportunity to sit and write and get to know this woman better. For him writing was a discovery, and it was also an addiction, a craving he had to satisfy. But there was no time. He owed Cynthia a visit.
The results of the tests were coming in, all of them negative. No cancer. No brain tumor. No masses anywhere. It was strange how the relief was replaced so quickly by frustration. What was it, then? They were both hungry to know the name of this enemy that was attacking them. Today they had given her a myelogram. She had to drink as many liquids as possible in order to foreshorten the dehydrating effects of the drug she’d get. Then she’d have to sit up in bed for hours in order to keep the dye in her spinal column from trickling into her cranium and giving her a headache.
It took fifteen minutes to find a parking place near the university hospital in Charlottesville. He finally found a meter on Jefferson Park Avenue and walked a quarter mile. The hospital was dreary, clean but cold. In the white-tiled lobby he had to pick up a visitor’s badge and wait for an elevator. It was after 7:00 by the time he reached Cynthia’s room on the eighth floor.
The wide wooden door was open when Warden approached her room, number 816, a private room for which they paid an extra fifteen dollars a day. Cynthia was propped up in the bed to a sitting position with her head supported by an extra pillow. Her hair swirled on the linens like that of Botticelli’s Venus. She looked very tired. Warden went to her and kissed her lightly.
“They say I should sit up all night to be safe,” Cynthia told Warden. He pulled a chair up to the side of her bed. She told him about the myelogram. “Russell Phillips was on the television news,” she said. “I could hear it. Everything still looks blurry.”
Warden had not known. They did not own a television set.
She told him she had called her father. “He was ready to drive down here tonight,” she said. “I talked him out of it.”
“By telling him I’d be here,” said Warden.
“I didn’t need to mention anything that horrible.” Her tone helped to relax him.
He asked whether the doctors had predicted when she could leave.
“Not at all. They want to do a CAT scan tomorrow.” She asked him to warn Sam Kaufman that she might not be on campus for the mixer this weekend.
He told her Sam Kaufman already knew.
She gently scratched the top of his hand. “Tell me what you did today.”
Warden told her about the special assembly, then about his chance to meet with Thomas Boatwright.
“He wants to audition for the play,” said Warden. “That was his big concern.”
“I’m sorry you can remember it all so clearly,” said Cynthia.
“Me too.”
They joked about his memory lapses, which were nearly always the function of his best writing. Warden was never so absentminded as when he was working on a poem. When he was at the height of his concentration, he could blank out several hours of the day. He’d been known to hold classes, drive to the grocery store, even sit through a dinner party, and have no memory whatever of the events later.
“Let me tell you about my meals,” said Cynthia. “In the beginning, there was Jell-O.” She tried to make him laugh for a half hour before she gave up. “Don’t be so glum,” she said. “I’m the one in the hospital, remember.”
Warden apologized. He did not want to tell her everything on his mind.
“I got a rejection today,” he said.
“Oh, those silly, silly editors,” she said. “What else is competing with me for your attention?”
What else, he thought. Shall I tell her what else?
“Dan Farnham helped me plan my classes today,” Warden said.
The expression on his face helped her guess immediately why he had broached the subject. “He told you I’d been down to see him backstage before dinner.”
“He did not tell me. Thomas Boatwright did.”
“But of course you did not become anxious or jealous or peevish because you understood that I had to tell him where I would be,” she said. “I had to let him know why I wouldn’t be at rehearsals. The telephones backstage were busy, so I walked down before dinner.”
Warden admitted to becoming peevish, but not terribly so.
She looked at him straight on with her wobbly eyes. “Is that an improvement?” she asked.
“I just don’t understand why I couldn’t deliver the message for you,” he said.
“Ben, it’s the same conversation every six months. Will you please stop worrying about younger men? There are too many of them out there for you to compete against. You just have to trust me.”
“I trust you,” he said.
“Then stop imagining that I’ve packed a suitcase to elope every time I speak to another male.”
The hyperbole made him smile. “I don’t think he’s a healthy friendship for you to cultivate.”
“You think he’s going to pounce on me?” she asked.
Warden said he thought Daniel Farnham was too unstable. “He’s going to explode someday,” he said. “The boys already talk about
