“Don’t buck me up,” David said. “I wrote it and I wrote what she burned. Don’t give me the stuff they feed the troops.”
“You can write them again.”
“No,” David told her. “When it’s right you can’t remember. Every time you read it again it comes as a great and unbelievable surprise. You can’t believe you did it. When it’s once right you never can do it again. You only do it once for each thing. And you’re only allowed so many in your life.”
“So many what?”
“So many good ones.”
“But you can remember them. You must.”
“Not me and not you and not anybody. They’re gone. Once I get them right they’re gone.”
“She was wicked to you.”
“No,” David said.
“What then?”
“Hurried,” David said. “Everything today was because she was hurried really.”
“I hope you’ll be as kind to me.”
“You just stay around and help me not to kill her. You know what she’s going to do don’t you? She’s going to pay me for the stories so that I won’t lose anything.”
“No.”
“Yes she is. She’s going to have her lawyers have them appraised in some fantastic Rube Goldberg manner and then she’s going to pay me double the appraisal price.”
“Truly, David, she didn’t say that.”
“She said it and it’s infinitely sound. Only the details need working out and what’s more the doubling of the appraisal or whatever makes it generous and gives her pleasure.”
“You can’t let her drive alone, David.”
“I know it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But let’s sit here for a little while,” David said. “There isn’t any hurry now. I think she’s probably tired and gone to sleep. I’d like to go to sleep too, with you, and wake up and find the stuff all there and not gone and go to work again.”
“We will sleep and someday when you wake up you’ll work as wonderfully as you did this morning.”
“You’re awfully good,” David said. “But you certainly got into a fine lot of trouble when you came in here that night, didn’t
you?”
“Don’t try to put me outside,” Marita said. “I know what I got into.”
“Sure,” said David. “We both know. Do you want another drink?”
“If you do,” Marita said and then, “I didn’t know it was a battle when I came.”
“Neither did I.”
“With you it’s really only you against time.
“Not the time that’s Catherine’s.”
“Only because her time is different. She’s panicked by it. You
said tonight that all of today was only hurry. That wasn’t true but it was perceptive. And you won so well over time for so long.”
Very much later he called for the waiter and paid for the drinks and left a good tip and he had started the car and put on the lights and was letting out the clutch when what had really happened came back to him again. It was back as clear and unblurred as when he had first looked into the trash burner and seen the ashes that had been stirred by the broomstick. He pushed his headlights carefully out through the quiet and empty evening of the town and followed them along the port onto the road. He felt Marita’s shoulder by him and heard her say, “I know, David. It hit me too.”
“Don’t let it.”
“I’m glad it did. There’s nothing to do but we’ll do it.”
“Good.”
“We’ll really do it. Toi et moi.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
AT THE HOTEL Madame came in from the kitchen when David and Marita came into the main room. She had a letter in her hand.
“Madame took the train for Biarritz,” she said. “She left this letter for Monsieur.”
‘When did she go?” David asked.
“Immediately after Monsieur and Madame left,” Madame Aurol said. “She sent the boy to the station for the ticket and to reserve a wagon-lit.”
David began reading the letter.
‘What would you eat?” Madame said. “Some cold chicken and a salad? An omelette to start. There’s lamb too if Monsieur would rather. What would he like, Madame?”
Marita and Madame Aurol were talking together and David finished reading the letter. He put it in his pocket and looked at Madame Aurol. “Did she seem herself when she left?”