She twisted and knotted a handkerchief, using it from time to time to wipe the beaded sweat from her forehead.
Even in the dim light reflected from the lake, I could see that she wore a great deal of make-up, but she looked attractive with her straight dark hair loose to her shoulders—except that her face was puffy and swollen as if she had just gotten up from sleep.
She wanted to talk about herself, and I wanted to listen.
Her father had given her a good home, an education, everything a wealthy shipbuilder could give his only daughter—but not forgiveness.
He would never forgive her elopement with the sailor.
She took my hand as she spoke, and rested her head on my shoulder.
"The night Gary and I were married," she whispered, "I was a terrified virgin.
And he just went crazy.
First, he had to slap me and beat me. And then he took me with no love-making.
That was the last time we were ever together. I never let him touch me again."
She could probably tell by the trembling of my hand that I was startled.
It was too violent and intimate for me. Feeling my hand stir, she gripped it tighter as if she had to finish her story before she could let me go.
It was important to her, and I sat quietly as one sits before a bird that feeds from your palm.
"Not that I don't like men," she assured me with wide-eyed openness.
"I've been with other men.
Not him, but lots of others.
Most men are gentle and tender with a woman. They make love slowly, with caresses and kisses first."
She looked at me meaningfully, and let her open palm brush back and forth against mine.
It was what I had heard about, read about, dreamed about.
I didn't know her name, and she didn't ask mine.
She just wanted me to take her someplace where we could be alone.
I wondered what Alice would think.
I caressed her awkwardly and kissed her still more hes-itantly so that she looked up at me.
"What's the matter?" she whispered.
"What are you thinking?"
"About you."
"Do you have a place we can go?"
Each step forward was caution. At what point would the ground give way and plunge me into anxiety? Something kept me moving ahead to test my footing.
"If you don't have a place, the Mansion Hotel on Fifty-third doesn't cost too much.
And they don't bother you about luggage if you pay in advance."
"I have a room—"
She looked at me with new respect.
"Well, that's fine."
Still nothing.
And that in itself was curious. How far could I go without being overwhelmed by symptoms of panic?
When we were alone in the room?
When she undressed? When I saw her body? When we were lying together?
Suddenly, it was important to know if I could be like other men, if I could ever ask a woman to share a life with me.
Having intelligence and knowledge wasn't enough. I wanted this, too. The sense of release and looseness was strong now with the feeling that it was possible. The excitement that came over me when I kissed her again communicated itself, and I was sure I could be normal with her.
She was different from Alice.
She was the kind of woman who had been around.
Then her voice changed, uncertain.
"Before we go… Just one thing…" She stood up and took a step toward me in the spray of lamplight, opening her coat, and I could see the shape of her body as I had not imagined it all the time we were sitting next to each other in the shadows.
"Only the fifth month," she said.
"It doesn't make any difference. You don't mind, do you?"
Standing there with her coat open, she was superimposed as a double exposure on the picture of the middle-aged woman just out of the bathtub, holding open her bathrobe for Charlie to see.
And I waited, as a blasphemer waits for lightning.
I looked away.
It was the last thing I had expected, but the coat wrapped tightly around her on such a hot night should have warned me that something was wrong.
"It's not my husband's," she assured me.