The coiffeuse in her white uniform, faintly sweating lip-rouge and cologne reminded her of many nurses.
In the next room Dick dozed under an apron and a lather of soap.
The mirror in front of Nicole reflected the passage between the men’s side and the women’s, and Nicole started up at the sight of Tommy entering and wheeling sharply into the men’s shop.
She knew with a flush of joy that there was going to be some sort of showdown.
She heard fragments of its beginning.
“Hello, I want to see you.”
“. . . serious.”
“. . . serious.”
“. . . perfectly agreeable.”
In a minute Dick came into Nicole’s booth, his expression emerging annoyed from behind the towel of his hastily rinsed face.
“Your friend has worked himself up into a state.
He wants to see us together, so I agreed to have it over with.
Come along!”
“But my hair—it’s half cut.”
“Nevermind—come along!”
Resentfully she had the staring coiffeuse remove the towels. Feeling messy and unadorned she followed Dick from the hotel.
Outside Tommy bent over her hand.
“We’ll go to the Cafe des Alliees,” said Dick.
“Wherever we can be alone,” Tommy agreed.
Under the arching trees, central in summer, Dick asked:
“Will you take anything, Nicole?”
“A citron presse.”
“For me a demi,” said Tommy.
“The Blackenwite with siphon,” said Dick.
“Il n’y a plus de Blackenwite.
Nous n’avons que le Johnny Walkair.”
“Ca va.”
“She’s—not—wired for sound but on the quiet you ought to try it—”
“Your wife does not love you,” said Tommy suddenly.
“She loves me.”
The two men regarded each other with a curious impotence of expression.
There can be little communication between men in that position, for their relation is indirect, and consists of how much each of them has possessed or will possess of the woman in question, so that their emotions pass through her divided self as through a bad telephone connection.
“Wait a minute,” Dick said.
“Donnez moi du gin et du siphon.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“All right, go on, Tommy.”
“It’s very plain to me that your marriage to Nicole has run its course.
She is through.
I’ve waited five years for that to be so.”
“What does Nicole say?”
They both looked at her.
“I’ve gotten very fond of Tommy, Dick.”
He nodded.
“You don’t care for me any more,” she continued.
“It’s all just habit.
Things were never the same after Rosemary.”
Unattracted to this angle, Tommy broke in sharply with:
“You don’t understand Nicole.
You treat her always like a patient because she was once sick.”
They were suddenly interrupted by an insistent American, of sinister aspect, vending copies of The Herald and of The Times fresh from New York.