Catherine came in and said, “You look wonderful together and I’m so proud. I feel as though I’d invented you. Was he good today, Marita?”
“We had a nice lunch,” Marita said. “Please be fair, Catherine.”
“Oh I know he’s a satisfactory lover,” Catherine said. “He’s always that. That’s just like his martinis or how he swims or skis or flew probably. I never saw him with a plane. Everyone says he was marvelous. It’s like acrobats really I suppose and just as dull. I wasn’t asking about that.”
“You were very good to let us spend a day together, Catherine,” Marita said.
“You can spend the rest of your lives together,” Catherine said. “If you don’t bore each other. I have no further need of either of you.
David was watching her in the mirror and she looked calm, handsome and normal. He could see Marita looking at her very sadly.
“I do like to look at you though and I’d like to hear you talk if you’d ever open your mouths.”
“How do you do,” said David.
“That was quite a good effort,” Catherine said. “I’m very well.”
“Have any new plans?” David asked. He felt as though he were hailing a ship.
“Only what I’ve told you,” Catherine went on. “They’ll prob ably keep me quite busy.”
“What was all the guff about another woman?”
He felt Marita kick him and he put his foot on hers to acknowledge.
190 ‘9’
. .
“That’s not guff,” Catherine said. “I want to have one more try to see if I’ve missed anything. I might have.”
“All of us are fallible,” David said and Marita kicked him again.
“I want to see,” Catherine said. “I know enough about that now so I should be able to tell. Don’t worry about your dark girl. She’s not my type at all. She’s yours. She’s what you like and very nice it is but not for me. I’m not attracted to the gamin type.”
“Perhaps I am a gamin,” Marita said.
“That’s a very polite word for that part.”
“But I’m also more of a woman than you are Catherine.”
“Go ahead and show David what sort of gamin you are. He’d like it.
“He knows what sort of woman I am.
“That’s splendid,” Catherine said. “I’m glad you both found your tongues finally. I do prefer conversation.
“You aren’t really a woman at all,” Marita said.
“I know it,” Catherine said. “I’ve tried to explain it to David often enough. Isn’t that true, David?”
David looked at her and said nothing.
“Didn’t I?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I did try and I broke myself in pieces in Madrid to be a girl and all it did was break me in pieces,” Catherine said. “Now all I am is through. You’re a girl and a boy both and you really are. You don’t have to change and it doesn’t kill you and I’m not. And now I’m nothing. All I wanted was for David and you to be happy. Everything else I invent.”
Marita said, “I know it and I try to tell David.”
“I know you do. But you don’t have to be loyal to me or to anything. Don’t do it. Nobody would anyway and you probably aren’t really. But I tell you not to be. I want you to be happy and make him happy. You can too and I can’t and I know it.”
“You’re the finest girl there is,” Marita said.
“I’m not. I’m finished before I ever started.”
“No. I’m the one,” Marita said. “I was stupid and awful.”
“You weren’t stupid. Everything you said was true. Let’s stop talking and be friends. Can we?”
“Can we please?” Marita asked her.
“I want to,” Catherine said. “And not be such a tragic bully. Please take your time about the book, David. You know all I want is for you to write the best you can. That’s what we started with. I’m over it now whatever this one was.
“You were just tired,” David said. “I don’t think you ate any lunch either.”
“Probably not,” Catherine said. “But I may have. Can we forget it all now though and just be friends?”