She said, “All right,” and rolled over quickly like a small animal and, dark headed, lay curled up with her closed eyes away from the light and her long dark shiny eyelashes against the rose brown early morning color of her skin. David looked at her and thought how beautiful she was and how he could see her spirit had not gone from her body when she slept. She was lovely and her coloring and the unbelievable smoothness of her skin were almost Javanese, he thought. He watched the coloring in her face deepen as the light grew stronger. Then he shook his head and carrying his clothing on his left arm opened and closed the door and went out into the new morning, walking barefoot on the stones that were still wet with dew.
In his and Catherine’s room he took a shower, shaved, found a fresh shirt and shorts and put them on, looked around the empty bedroom, the first morning he had ever been in it with Catherine not there, and then went out to the empty kitchen and found a tin of Maquereau Vin Blanc Capitaine Cook and opened it and took it, perilous with edge-level juice, with a cold bottle of the Tuborg beer out to the bar.
He opened the beer, took the bottle top between his right thumb and the first joint of his right forefinger and bent it in until it was flattened together, put it in his pocket since he saw no container to toss it into, raised the bottle that was still cold to his hand and now beaded wet in his fingers and, smelling the aroma from the opened tin of spiced and marinated mackerel, he took a long drink of the cold beer, set it down on the bar and
took an envelope from his hip pocket and unfolded Catherine’s letter and commenced to reread it.
David, I knew very suddenly you must know how terrible it was. Worse than hitting someone, a child is the worst I guess—with a car. The thump on the fender or maybe just a small bump and then all the rest of it happening and the crowd gathering to scream. The Frenchwoman screaming &rasseuse even if it was the child’s fault. I did it and I knew I did it and I can’t undo it. It’s too awful to understand. But it happened.
I’ll cut this short. I’ll be back and we’ll settle things the best we can. Do not worry at all. I’ll wire and write and do all the things for my book so if you ever finish it only I will try to do this one thing. I had to burn the other things. The worst was being righteous about it but I don’t have to tell you that. I do not ask for forgiveness but please have good luck and I will do everything as well as I can.
Heiress has been good to you and me both and I don’t hate her.
I won’t end as I’d like to because it would sound too preposterous to believe but I will say it anyway since I was always rude and presumptuous and preposterous too lately as we both know. I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.
Catherine
After he had finished it he read it through again.
He had never read any other letters from Catherine because from the time they had met at the Crillon bar in Paris until they were married at the American church at Avenue Hoche they had seen each other every day and, reading this first one now for the third time, he found that he still could be, and was, moved by her.
He put the letter back in his hip pocket and ate a second small, plump, miniature mackerel in the aromatic white wine sauce and
.
finished the cold beer. Then he went out to the kitchen for a piece of bread to sop up the liquid in the long tin and for a fresh bottle of beer. He would try to work today and would almost certainly fail. There had been too much emotion, too much damage, too much of everything and his changing of allegiance, no matter how sound it had seemed, no matter how it simplified things for him, was a grave and violent thing and this letter compounded the gravity and the violence.