“Made,” he said.
“Made,” she said. Then she said, “The one thing you were always faithful to was good wine.”
“Admirable of me, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry I said it about the drinking this morning.”
“Those things are good for me. It’s funny, but they are.”
“You mean what you were drinking? Or the criticism?”
“What I was drinking. The tall frozen ones.”
“Maybe they are. And I don’t make any criticism now except that it is awfully hard to get something to eat in this house.”
“Be patient. You’ve told me that enough times.”
“I’m patient,” she said. “I’m just hungry. I know now why people eat at wakes and before funerals.”
“Be as rough with it as is good for you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be. Are we going to go on saying we’re sorry for everything? I said it once.”
“Listen, you,” he said. “I’ve had this thing three weeks longer than you and maybe I’m in a different phase.”
“You’d have a different and more interesting phase,” she said. “I know you. Why don’t you just get back to your whores?”
“Wouldn’t you like to stop it?”
“No. It makes me feel better.”
“Who was it said, ‘Mary, pity women’?”
“Some man,” she said. “Some bastard of a man.”
“Do you want to hear the whole poem?”
“No. And I’m tired of you already and you knowing it three weeks earlier and all that. Just because I’m a non-combatant and you’re in something so secret you have to sleep with a cat so you won’t talk—”
“And you still don’t see why we broke up?”
“We broke up because I got tired of you. You’ve always loved me and you couldn’t help it and you can’t help it now.”
“That’s true.”
The house boy was standing in the dining room. He had unavoidably seen and heard quarrels in the living room before and they made his brown face perspire with unhappiness. He loved his master and the cats and dogs and he admired the beautiful women respectfully and it made him feel terrible when there were quarrels. He thought that he had never seen such a beautiful woman and the caballero was quarreling with her and she was saying angry things to the caballero.
“Señor,” he said. “Pardon me. May I speak to you in the kitchen?”
“Excuse me please, darling.”
“I suppose it’s something mysterious,” she said and poured her glass full of wine.
“Señor,” the boy said. “The Lieutenant spoke in castellano and he said for to come in immediately repeat immediately. He said you would know where and that it was a business matter. I did not wish to call on our phone and I called from the village. Then they told me you were here.”
“Good,” said Thomas Hudson. “Thank you very much. Please fry some eggs for the señorita and me and tell the chauffeur to have the car ready.”
“Yes sir,” the boy said.
“What was it, Tom?” she asked. “Is it bad?”
“I have to go to work.”
“But you said you wouldn’t have to with this wind.”
“I know it. But it’s out of my hands.”
“Do you want me to stay here?”
“You can stay and read Tom’s letters if you like and the chauffeur will take you to your plane.”
“All right.”
“You can take the letters with you, too, if you want and any pictures or anything you see. Go through my desk.”
“You are changed.”
“Maybe a little,” he said.
“Go out to the studio and look at any of the stuff,” he said. “There are some good ones from before we started this project. Take anything you like. There’s a good one of you.”
“I’ll take it,” she said. “You’re awfully good when you’re good.”
“Read the letters from her if you like. Some of them are museum pieces. Take any along that are comic enough.”
“You sound as though I travelled with a trunk.”
“You can read them and then drop them out of the John in the plane.”
“All right.”
“I’ll try to get back before you go. But don’t count on it. If I have to use the chauffeur I’ll send a taxi to take you to the hotel or the airport.”