“I thought we flew to Albuquerque.”
“That was another time.”
“Will we stop early in the afternoons at the best Motel in the A.A.A. book and I make you any drinks you want while you read the paper and Life and Time and Newsweek, and I will read the new fresh Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar?”
“Yes. But we come back here too.”
“Of course. With our car. On an Italian liner; whichever one is best then. We drive straight here from Geneva.”
“You don’t want to stop anywhere for the night?”
“Why? We want to get home to our own house.”
“Where will our house be?”
“We can decide that any time. There are always plenty of houses in this town. Would you like to live in the country too?”
“Yes,” the Colonel said. “Why not?”
“Then we could see the trees when we woke up. What sort of trees will we see on this journey?”
“Pine mostly, and cotton-wood along the creeks, and aspen. Wait till you see the aspen turn yellow in the fall.”
“I’m waiting. Where will we stay in Wyoming?”
“We’ll go to Sheridan first and then decide.”
“Is Sheridan nice?”
“It’s wonderful. In the car we’ll drive to where they had the Wagon-Box Fight and I’ll tell you about it. We will drive up, on the way to Billings, to where they killed that fool George Armstrong Custer, and you can see the markers where everybody died and I’ll explain the fight to you.”
“That will be wonderful. Which is Sheridan more like, Mantova or Verona or Vicenza?”
“It isn’t like any of those. It is right up against the mountains, almost like Schio.”
“Is it like Cortina then?”
“Nothing like. Cortina is in a high valley in the mountains. Sheridan lays right up against them. They aren’t any foot-hills to the Big Horns. They rise high out of the plateau. You can see Cloud’s Peak.”
“Will our cars climb them properly?”
“You’re damn right they will. But I would much rather not have any hydramatic drive.”
“I can do without it,” the girl said. Then she held her self straight and hard not to cry. “As I can do without everything else.”
“What are you drinking?” the Colonel said. “We haven’t even ordered yet.”
“I don’t think I will drink anything.”
“Two very dry Martinis,” the Colonel said to the bartender, “and a glass of cold water.”
He reached into his pocket and unscrewed the top of the medicine bottle, and shook two of the big tablets into his left hand. With them in his hand, he screwed the top back on the bottle. It was no feat for a man with a bad right hand.
“I said I didn’t want to drink anything.”
“I know daughter. But I thought you might need one. We can leave it on the bar. Or I can drink it myself. Please,” he said. “I did not mean to be brusque.”
“We haven’t asked for the little negro that will look after me.”
“No. Because I did not want to ask for him until Cipriani came in and I could pay for him.”
“Is everything that rigid?”
“With me, I guess,” the Colonel said. “I’m sorry daughter.”
“Say daughter three times straight.”
“Hija, figlia, Daughter.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think we should just leave here. I love to have people see us, but I don’t want to see anybody.”
“The box with the negro in it is on top of the cash register.”
“I know. I’ve seen it for sometime.”
The bar-tender came, with the two drinks, frost cold from the chilled coldness of the glasses, and he brought the glass of water.
“Give me that small packet that came in my name and is on top of the cash register,” the Colonel said to him. “Tell Cipriani I will send him a check for it.”
He had made another decision.
“Do you want your drink, daughter?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind me changing my mind too.”
They drank, after touching the glasses very lightly, so lightly that the contact was almost imperceptible.
“You were right,” she said feeling its warmth and its momentary destruction of sorrow.