“Damn you,” he said. “Darling,” he added.
“You damned me enough,” she said.
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“Why did you marry her, Tom?”
“Because you were in love.”
“It wasn’t a very good reason.”
“Nobody ever said it was. Especially not me. But I don’t have to make my errors and repent of them and then discuss them, do I?”
“If I want you to.”
The big black and white cat had come in and he rubbed against her leg.
“He’s got us mixed up,” Thomas Hudson said. “Or maybe he’s getting good sense.”
“It couldn’t be—?”
“Sure. Of course. Boy,” he called.
The cat came over to him and jumped into his lap. It did not matter which one it was.
“We might as well both love her, Boy. Take a good look at her. You’ll never see any more womens like that.”
“Is he the one you sleep with?”
“Yes. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“None. I like him better than the man I sleep with now and he’s just about as sad.”
“Do we have to talk about him?”
“No. And you don’t have to pretend you haven’t been at sea when your eyes are burned and there are white slit marks in the corners of them and your hair is as sun-streaked as though you used something on it—”
“And I walk with a rolling gait and carry a parrot on my shoulder and hit people with my wooden leg. Look, darling, I go to sea occasionally because I am a painter of marine life for the Museum of Natural History. Not even war must interfere with our studies.”
“They are sacred,” she said. “I’ll remember that lie and stick with it. Tom, you truly don’t care for her at all?”
“Not at all.”
“You still love me?”
“Didn’t I give any signs of it?”
“It could have been a role. The one of the always faithful lover no matter what whores I find you with. Thee hasn’t been faithful to me, Cynara, in thy fashion.”
“I always told you that you were too literate for your own good. I was through with that poem when I was nineteen.”
“Yes, and I always told you that if you would paint and work at it as you should, instead of making fantasies and falling in love with other people—”
“Marrying them, you mean.”
“No. Marrying them is bad enough. But you fall in love with them and then I don’t respect you.”
“That’s that old lovely one I remember. ‘And then I don’t respect you.’ I’ll buy that one at any price you put on it and take it out of circulation.”
“I respect you. And you don’t love her, do you?”
“I love you and respect you and I don’t love her.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad I’m so ill and that I missed the plane.”
“I really do respect you, you know, and I respect every damned fool thing you do or did.”
“And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.”
“What was the last one?”
“I don’t know. If it was a promise you broke it.”
“Would you want to skip it, beauty?”
“I’d like to have skipped it.”
“Maybe we could. We skipped most things.”
“No. That’s untrue. There’s visible evidence on that. But you think making love to a woman is enough. You never think about her wanting to be proud of you. Nor about small tendernesses.”
“Nor about being a baby like the men you love and care for.”
“Couldn’t you be more needing and make me necessary and not be so damned give it and take it and take it away I’m not hungry.”
“What did we come out here for? Moral lectures?”
“We came out here because I love you and I want you to be worthy of yourself.”
“And of you and God and all other abstractions. I’m not even an abstract painter. You’d have asked Toulouse-Lautrec to keep away from brothels and Gauguin not to get the syphilis and Baudelaire to get home early. I’m not as good as they were but the hell with you.”
“I never was like that.”
“Sure you were. Along with your work. Your goddam hours of work.”