“It only makes me feel easier about things.”
“And nothing else does?”
He finished making the absinthe for her, holding it well short of mildness. “Go ahead,” he told her. “Don’t wait for me.” She took a long sip and then he took her glass from her and drank and said, “Thank you, Ma’am. That puts heart in a man.
“So make your own, you clipping reader,” she said.
“What was that?” the young man said to her.
“I didn’t say it.”
But she had said it and he said to her, “Why don’t you just shut up about the clippings.”
“Why?” she said, leaning toward him and speaking too loudly. “Why should I shut up? Just because you wrote this morning? Do you think I married you because you re a writer? You and your clippings.”
“All right,” the young man said. “Can you tell me the rest of it when we’re by ourselves?”
“Don’t ever think for a moment I won’t,” she said.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Don’t guess,” she said. “You can be certain.
David Bourne stood up and went over to the hanger and lifted his raincoat and went out the door without looking back.
At the table Catherine raised her glass and tasted the absinthe very carefully and went on tasting it in little sips.
The door opened and David came back in and walked up to the table. He was wearing his trench coat and had his boina pulled low on his forehead. “Do you have the keys to the car?”
“Yes,” she said.
“May I have them?”
She gave them to him but said, “Don’t be stupid, David. It was the rain and you being the only one who had worked. Sit down.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Please,” she said.
He sat down. That didn’t make much sense, he thought. You got up to go out and take the damned car and stay out and the hell with her and then you come back in and have to ask for the key and then sit down like a slob. He picked up his glass and took a drink. The drink was good anyway.
“What are you going to do about lunch?” he asked.
“You say where and I’ll eat it with you. You do still love me, don’t you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“That was a sordid quarrel,” Catherine said.
“The first one
“It was my fault about the clippings.”
“Let’s not mention the god damned clippings.”
“That’s what it was all about.”
“It was you thinking about them when you were drinking. Bringing them up because you were drinking.”
“It sounds like regurgitating,” she said. “Awful. Actually my tongue just slipped making a joke.”
“You had to have them in your head to bnng them out that way.
“All right,” she said. “I thought maybe it was all over.
“It is.”
“Well why do you keep on insisting and insisting about it for then?”
“We shouldn’t have taken this drink.”
“No. Of course not. Especially me. But you certainly needed it. Do you think it will do you any good?”
“Do we have to do this now?” he asked.
“I’m certainly going to stop it. It bores me.” “That’s the one damned word in the language I can’t stand.” “Lucky you with only one word like that in the language.” “Oh shit,” he said. “Eat lunch by yourself.” “No. I won’t. We’ll eat lunch together and behave like human beings.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry. It really was a joke and it just misfired. Truly David that was all.”
Chapter Five
THE TIDE WAS FAR OUT when David Bourne woke and the sun was bright on the beach and the sea was a dark blue. The hills showed green and new washed and the clouds had gone from the mountains. Catherine was still sleeping and he looked at her and watched her regular breathing and the sun on her face and thought, how strange that the sun on her eyes should not wake her.
After he had taken a shower and brushed his teeth and shaved, he was hungry for breakfast but he pulled on a pair of shorts and a sweater and found his notebook and pencils and the sharpener and sat at the table by the window that looked out over the estuary of the river to Spain. He started to write and he forgot about Catherine and what he saw from the window and the writing went by itself as it did with him when he was lucky. He wrote it exactly and the sinister part only showed as the light feathering of a smooth swell on a calm day marking the reef beneath.