A Sport and a Pastime

“No, no. She’s getting married.”

“I thought she was married,” Cristina says.

“She’s divorced.”

“The town whore,” Cristina explains.

“Who’s she marrying?” Billy says.

“Oh, some student. I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.”

“How about you?” he says.

“It’s nothing. Alix invented it.”

“Come on.”

“No. Really.” I feel like an idiot.

Alix is smiling. The show comes on again.

“I don’t like this singer as much as the other one,” Cristina says.

When we finally come out the sky is still dark, but its authority is gone. The night has passed. We drive back to their house. Billy turns on all the lights. He insists on preparing breakfast. He wanders around the kitchen with a huge pan in his hand. He begins to break a dozen eggs into it.

“How about making the toast?” he says.

I’m not even hungry. He gives me a dish with a big square of butter on it, right out of the refrigerator. It’s too hard. When I try to spread it, I tear the toast. He is pouring milk into the eggs, then Worcestershire sauce.

“How do you like them?” he asks me. “Hard or soft?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He looks at the color.

“They need more milk,” he says.

In the long, richly furnished salon, the women are sitting on the sofa. It’s almost light outside. The brightness of the room and the windows paling makes it seem like the end of a long crisis. Their hands are moving. I can hear their palms against their wrists. I sit near them.

“What are you doing?”

“Flipping,” Cristina says.

They compare coins. Their attention to the game is solemn, unreal.

“We’re flipping for you,” she says. A pause. “It’s one up.

Neither of them looks at me. They match again and hold their wrists near each other. Cristina breaks into nervous laughter.

“Who won?” I ask.

No answer.

“Three out of five,” Alix suddenly says.

“All right.”

The coins flicker in the air. Cristina drops hers. It doesn’t seem right for me to help her find it. She searches the dark, Oriental rug on which it has disappeared.

“It’s by the coffee table,” Alix says.

“Where?”

“Just inside the leg.”

Cristina’s on her hands and knees.

“It’s heads,” she says.

Billy comes in to announce everything is ready.

“What’d you drop?” he says.

“Hm?”

“Where’ve you been?” Alix says.

We sit in the dining room in the five o’clock light of a Paris morning. Against the wall is a huge, mahogany buffet. Mirrors which reflect the dawn. The table is large enough for twelve. Billy brings in the platter heaping with eggs that smell alarmingly strong.

“What are these?” Alix says, taking a small portion. “Eggs?”

Billy is sitting at one end of the table. He stares at her. He becomes serious when he drinks. Cristina begins laughing. She can’t stop. She laughs as she tries to serve herself, and Alix starts in, too. They laugh insanely; helpless, crying laughter. Eggs have spilled from the serving spoon onto the table, and Cristina tries to pick them up. By now she can’t even control her hand. She can’t look at Alix. They slowly fall into silence, but the slightest sound from either of them starts it again.

“What’s so funny?” Billy says. He hasn’t even smiled.

“Nothing.” The last syllable explodes. They are laughing so much it hurts.

“Aren’t you going to eat any eggs?” he finally says.

“What?” Cristina forms the word cautiously.

“I said aren’t you going to eat any eggs?”

She shakes her head slowly, no, then yes.

“They’re very interesting,” she says.

“Are they? Why?”

“I’ve never tasted eggs quite like these,” she says. She tries to become serious. Alix is laughing.

“Is that so?” he says.

“Did you make them, dear?”

“You’re very funny,” he says.

She gets up and begins opening drawers in the buffet, looking for napkins. Billy hands me the platter. The eggs are very dark, almost brown. They look curdled.

“I don’t think they’re bad,” he says.

Behind him, Cristina suddenly performs an obscene gesture, one hand in the bend of her white arm. It’s so deliberate I can’t think. Billy is bent over his plate.

“Keep it up,” he warns.

“What’s that, sweetheart?” she asks.

“You’re going to get it,” he says.

As she comes back to the table she begins to sing. Somehow it frightens me. I’m exhausted. I don’t know how to smile.

“Aren’t you even going to try them?” he says.

“Of course,” she says. “I love them.”

“There’s nothing wrong with them,” he says flatly. He eats methodically, watching her. He takes a sip of coffee.

I try the eggs. They taste like salt. Cristina strolls around the table humming as she gives everyone a napkin.

“Alix?” she asks sweetly. “More eggs?”

“Sit down, will you, Cristina?” he says. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“You’re beautiful,” she says. “I love you.”

“Just keep going.”

“I love the eggs. Some more eggs?” she asks me.

Everything is left on the table, the plates with their uneaten portions, the cups of coffee, the toast. The servants will take care of it all when they get up.

I drive Alix home in a taxi in the bright of morning. It’s not very far. The dawn smells cool and pure as we cross the sidewalk. She is very sleepy. She releases me with a word or two, a tired smile. The door closes. The lock sounds like a well-ordered life.

I walk back. In the streets there is an absolute silence, not a car moving, not a person. In the pale sky there are no birds. It’s like entering the past. Nothing is altered. Nothing makes a noise. On the corner, in the window of a cafe they sometimes go to, a cat is sleeping, a huge cat, soft as a dream. I pause there, awake before the city. I think of walking along the river, but my whole body is like dry wood. I turn down the street on which they live, a wide street, blue and empty, empty sidewalks as far as I can see.